Herbert Arthur Frederick Turner
Herbert Arthur Frederick Turner (1919–1998) was a British economist, statistician, and academic. His great strength was a thorough understanding of economics and statistics, particularly the operation of labour markets and the limitations of available statistics. This set him apart from most other academic industrial relations specialists. He was an inspiring lecturer and his tutorials and post-graduate supervisions were challenging and provocative as students were prodded and persuaded into thinking. Personal life Turner, known as Bert to family, friends, and colleagues, was born in London on 11 December 1919, the eldest son of Frederick Turner and Elizabeth May King; he had three siblings. Turner's fourth marriage, to a French academic, led him to spend much of his later years in France with his family. He died in Veneux- les –Sablons, near Fontainebleau, on 2 December 1998, a few days short of his 79th birthday. Career Education Turner studied at the Henry Thornton School in Clapham before going to the London School of Economics, aged 16, to study with Harold Laski. As a young promising left-wing intellectual, he interacted with the Webbs and, through Leonard Woolf, with the Bloomsbury group. He graduated in June 1939 and spent the war years first in