Jessica Blanche Peixotto, 1864-1941.

Social economist at UC-Berkeley.

Jessica Blanche Peixotto was born in New York City, to a prosperous family of Portuguese Jews. The family moved west to San Francisco in 1870, and were active in numerous philanthropic causes. Jessica was the eldest child (and only girl) in five children. After graduating high school in 1880, Jessica was kept at home, while her four younger brothers would go on to achieve distinction in their own right in other professions. Nonetheless, Jessica's interests were kept alive by private tutoring and the active intellectual and social atmosphere in her family home.

In 1891, at the advanced age of twenty-seven, Jessica enrolled as a special student at the University of California-Berkeley receiving her B.A. in 1894.  Peixotto came under the influence of the heterodox historicist Bernard Moses, and stayed on for graduate degree in department of History and Political Science (under which economics was at the time)  After a year's research at the Sorbonne in Paris writing a dissertation on French socialism, Peixotto received her Ph.D from Berkeley in 1900 (although co-educational since the 1870s, Peixotto was only the second woman to receive a doctoral degree at that university; the first was Milicient Shinn in 1898, albeit in education rather than economics).

Economics became its own department in 1902.  In 1903, Jessica Peixotto was appointed as instructor in sociology in the economics department at Berkeley, assigned to teach a course on socialism, but soon expanded her repetoire.  Peixotto was made assistant professor in 1907, associate in 1914 and finally full professor of  economics in 1918.    She would remain part of the Berkeley faculty until her retirement in 1935

Peixotto specialized on social economics, teaching courses on cost of living, poverty, household economics, etc. as well as holding a famous graduate seminar on the history of economic thought.   She was also continuously active in philanthropic causes outside the university.  Peixotto was appointed to the California State Board of Charities and Correction in 1912, where she would sit for a dozen years.    On the approach of the war in 1917, Peixotto developed a special curriculum in economics department for the training of professional social workers.  During WWI, Peixotto served in Washington, DC on the Council of National Defense, heading sub-committees on women in war production,  etc.  After her return to academia, Peixotto established and chaired the Heller Committee for Social Economics in 1923.  Her motto was "make science serve humanity"..

 

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