Information from LSE Magazine November 1985 No 70, p.11, Obituary

Lady Hicks, who died on Blockley Gloucestershire on 16 July, aged 89, was an economist of world-wide distinction.

Ursula Kathleen Webb, who was born in Dublin on 17 September 1896 went from Roedean to Somerville College, Oxford in 1915 where she read history. After graduating she worked for a time in the Agricultural Wages Board but her career was then interrupted for family reasons. In 1929 she registered for the B.Sc Econ. At LSE in which she gained first class honours in 1932 continuing as a research student until her Ph.D was awarded in 1935. She was then appointed Assistant Lecturer at LSE but on her marriage to (Sir) John Hicks who had been elected to a Cambridge Fellowship she resigned with him. Lady Hicks, however, maintained a close association with the School informally particularly as an external examiner. She was elected an Honorary Fellow in 1980.

Professor George Shackle writes ‘Lady Hick’s fame in her own right was, of course, world wide. In every institution and milieu she was a powerful and glowing source of inspiration: zestful, decisive, kindly, a born leader. Countless people in all the places where she lived or worked must owe her a deep debt of gratitude for far-sighted encouragement and friendship. Her great memorial, amongst tangible things, will no doubt be The Review of Economic Studies which her vision, driving force and administrative grasp were instrumental in founding in company with two other graduate students at LSE…The declared purpose of RES was to publish the promising work of young economists, from research students up to lecturers. It would not, at first, accept articles from Readers of Professors. Notoriously it became one of the most high powered and prestigious journals in the whole range of the profession.

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