Lindsay Fellowship

The Lindsay Fellowship named in honor of Cotton Mather Lindsay can be used to provide support for graduate students who are working in the area of applied Industrial Organization.

About Matt Lindsay

Cotton Mather Lindsay, son of Paul Leonard Lindsay and Elizabeth Mather Lindsay, died peacefully at his home in Culpeper, VA on Friday, January 16, 2015, after a long battle with cancer. His wife, Betsy Becker, was by his side.

Matt as he was known by family and friends was a native Atlantan born in 1940 and an honor graduate of North Fulton High School. After high school, Matt attended the University of Georgia where he was president of his fraternity, Pi Kappa Alpha. He was also a cadet in the ROTC program at North Fulton and the University of Georgia. After college, he served four years with the U. S. Air Force at Maxwell Air Base in Montgomery, AL. Following this time, he received his Ph.D. in economics in 1968 from the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, VA. After receiving his doctorate, he was selected as a Hoover Institute Fellow to study health care in Britain at the London School of Economics.

Lindsay became a college professor first at the University of California at Los Angeles, UCLA, where he served on then-Governor Ronald Reagan's Board of Economic Advisors in California. After leaving UCLA, he taught at Emory University in Atlanta, GA before moving to Clemson University, Clemson, SC where he became the J. Wilson Newman Professor of Economics. He was a member of the Mont Pelerin Society founded by Friedrich von Hayek in 1947. Prof. Lindsay served as a mentor to graduate students creating a community for right-minded young scholars, a position he held for thirty years until his retirement there in 2012. He was also instrumental in building the department to national and international recognition.

Prof. Lindsay published extensively in the fields of Industrial Organization, Public Choice and Labor. He was also the author of several books including a text on the study of Microeconomics which had been adopted by a number of universities including Harvard University in Cambridge, MA. Prof. Lindsay lectured at universities all over the world. His international favorites were universities in Melbourne, Australia and Cairo, Egypt. Each time he traveled to Australia, he would stop at his special tourist destination, Tahiti. His heart was with Clemson University for everything except college football. His football loyalties, however, always remained with his alma mater, the Bulldogs of the University of Georgia, where he had been a season football ticket holder for forty years.

Prof. Lindsay was amazingly talented in music which became evident early on with piano lessons followed by his joining a rock and roll band, The Racquette Squad, that rehearsed in the attic of his family home in Garden Hills on Rumson Road. His interest in music continued later in life culminating in his writing the libretto for an opera, Montrose, the story of James Graham, the Marquis of Montrose, one of the greatest and most attractive figures in all of Scottish history. Continuing his interest in music, Prof. Lindsay held season tickets for matinees at the Metropolitan Opera in New York for fifteen years.

Prof. Lindsay's hobbies included bicycling, sailing, traveling, cooking and brewing. His privately bottled beer was brewed from hops grown at his Bolton Landing, NY property. A special favorite was called Bottle Blonde. Particular interests in fields other than economics were in-depth studies of the War Between the States as well as the Greek and Roman Classics. He and his wife of twenty-five years, Elizabeth Becker, originally of Appleton, WI, were avid investors and collectors of art. Their homes are filled with beautiful pieces of artwork from many talented young American artists. When Prof. Lindsay retired from Clemson University, he wanted to be closer to his family, moving to Virginia from Bolton Landing, NY to become a "gentleman farmer like Mr. Jefferson."

Prof. Lindsay is survived by his wife, Elizabeth Becker, Ph.D., of New York, NY and Culpeper, VA, and two sons, Paul Mather Lindsay, Ph.D., and his wife Annie Stiers Lindsay of Atlanta, GA and Cherry Log, GA and Daniel August Young of New York, NY. A son, Jefferson Davis Lindsay, predeceased Prof. Lindsay. Prof. Lindsay is also survived by three granddaughters, Elizabeth Anne Lindsay, Virginia Mather Lindsay and Abigail Archer Lindsay all of Atlanta as well as three sisters, Elizabeth Lindsay Boozer of Atlanta, GA, Blue Ridge, GA and Cocoa Beach, FL; Judith Lindsay Warren of Hilton Head, SC and Atlanta, GA; and Barbara Lindsay Gibbes of Jacksonville, FL, and Summerfield, NC.