author
George O'Brien
1892–1973
An Irish economist and public thinker, this author wrote widely on Ireland’s economic past and helped shape the study of political economy in Dublin for decades. His work connects history, policy, and everyday life in a way that still feels clear and direct.
1 Audiobook
An Essay on Mediæval Economic Teaching
by George O'Brien
About the author
Born in Dublin on January 26, 1892, George Augustine Thomas O'Brien became an important Irish economist, economic historian, and academic. He studied at University College Dublin and was later called to the Irish Bar, but ill health led him away from legal practice and toward economics.
From 1926 to 1961, he taught at University College Dublin, where he served as professor of national economics and later political economy. He was also active in public life, serving in Seanad Éireann as an independent senator. Outside the classroom, he became known for serious, accessible work on Irish economic history, including studies of Ireland in the eighteenth century and in the period from the Union to the Famine.
O'Brien spent most of his life in Dublin and died there on December 31, 1973. Remembered as both a scholar and a teacher, he helped build a stronger understanding of Ireland’s economic development and its place in modern history.