Use Restrictions

There are no restrictions.

Access Restrictions

Collection is open to research.

Preferred Citation

Martin Wohl papers, Collection #C0174, Special Collections and Archives, George Mason University Libraries.

Acquisition Information

Donated by Damian Kulash in 2009.

Processing Information

Processed by Jesse Gastelle in 2010. EAD markup completed by Jordan Patty in 2009. Additional EAD markup completed by Jesse Gastelle in 2010.

Biographical Information

Born in 1930 in Greensboro, North Carolina, Martin Wohl studied and wrote about transportation economics for more than 30 years. He received a master's degree in engineering from MIT in 1960 and a doctorate in engineering from the University of California at Berkeley in 1966. He worked in the Department of Commerce during the Kennedy Administration and taught at Harvard University for two years following that. He later returned to Washington, D.C., to head the transportation studies department at the Urban Institute in 1969, and in 1972, he accepted a faculty position at Carnegie Mellon University. He is most recognized for "The Transportation Problem" (1965), the book he co-authored with John R. Meyer and John F. Kain. He died in 2009 at his home in Fairfax City, Virginia.

Scope and Content

This collections contains writings, records, photos, and scrapbooks of one of the founders of transportation economics, Dr. Martin Wohl. The majority of the collection focuses on Wohl's work as a transportation economist, but the records and photographs depict Wohl and his family and friends throughout his life.

The first series contains essays, newspaper articles, journal articles, books, and reviews surrounding Wohl's work in urban transportation and traffic engineering (written both by and about Wohl). Also in this series are his records, including degree work (bachelor's and master's theses, Ph.D. dissertation), interviews with Wohl, clippings, and correspondence, including letters to magazine and newspaper editors. Much of the professional correspondence contains information on the publication of his books (including copyrights), and there are also files with copies of reviews of his books The Urban Transportation Problem and Traffics Systems Analysis. Cities analyzed in the collection include Washington, D.C., San Francisco, Boston, Pittsburgh, and Los Angeles. The Second series consists of photographs, mostly black and white snapshots. The subjects include family, military service, West Point, and Cambridge, and Wohl himself. The third collection contains two unbound scrapbooks that contain photographs and emphemra from Wohl's life mostly from the 1930s through the 1960s.

Arrangement

Organized into three series.

Missing Title Series 1: Subject Files, 1958-1993 (Box 1-7) Series 2: Photographs, 1919-2000 (Box 8) Series 3: Scrapbooks, 1930s-1960s (Box 9-10)

Related Material

Special Collections and Archives holds many other transportation-related collections.

Subjects and Indexing Terms

• Local transit -- United States
• Photographic prints
• Scrapbooks
• Transportation -- United States -- Planning
• Transportation engineering
• Wohl, Martin