Eugene Grebenik

Eugene Grebenik
Early 1960s, at Leeds
Born	(1919-07-20)20 July 1919 Kyiv,Ukrainian SSR
Died	14 October 2001(2001-10-14)(aged 82) Oxford,England
Nationality	British
Scientific career
Fields	Demography

Eugene GrebenikCB(Ukrainian:Євген Гребеник;20 July 1919 – 14 October 2001), known as "Grebby", was aBritishcivil servant who was a central figure in the development ofdemographyin Britain. He was the first director of theBritish Civil Service College.

Early life and education

Grebenik was born inKyiva few months after the establishment of theUkrainian SSR.He was the only son and elder child ofJewishparents Schulim Grebenik (1887–1972), estate agent, and his wife, Lea Helene (néeLopatizkaya; 1894–1985), a qualified lawyer. His birth was not registered with the Soviet government because his mother did not want him to benaturalisedand thought that this was mandatory.He had a sister, Renata Rosalie. The family moved toDanzigin 1920, then toBerlin,and finally, after the rise ofAdolf Hitler,toEnglandin 1933. Grebenik could speak several European languages but none like a native. All his life he was known as Grebby, because he never liked the association witheugenicsborn by the name 'Eugene'.

He attended the Xaverian College Catholic high school inBrighton.

Grebenik went to theLondon School of Economicsin 1935 aged sixteen, and graduated with a first-class degree in economics (with statistics and demography as his special subject) at eighteen.He earned theFarrmedal and prize.

Career

After a brief spell working in theCity of London,he returned to the LSE as research assistant toArthur Bowley,and then moved to Bristol to work withH. A. Shannon.Their book,The Population of Bristol,was published in 1943. Rejected by the army due to his foreign birth, Grebenik returned to the LSE in 1940 and graduated MSc in 1941.

Promoted to lecturer in statistics in 1944, Grebenik was seconded to the Admiralty for the final year ofWorld War IIas a statistical officer, where he worked withWilliam Brass.He was then seconded for a year to the secretariat of the Royal Commission on Population. He was naturalised on 23 November 1946 and shortly afterwards married Virginia Barker.

Grebenik worked withDavid Glass,editor of Population Studies, from its inception in 1947—and continued to be associated with the journal as joint and then sole editor for fifty years. He was promoted to reader in demography at the LSE in 1949. His work with Glass on the 1946 family census, published in two volumes as The Trend and Pattern of Fertility in Great Britain (1954), was a landmark in cohort analysis. In 1954 Grebenik was appointed professor of social studies at theUniversity of Leeds.

In 1970 Grebenik was appointed the first principal of the Civil Service College atSunningdale.He left the college in 1976 to conduct research at theOffice of Population Censuses and Surveys,working withAbraham Manie AdelsteinandJohn Fox,where he remained until he retired in 1984.

Grebenik was secretary-general of the International Union for the Scientific Study of Population from 1963 to 1973. He organised three of the IUSSP's four-yearly general population conferences, including the one held inBelgradein 1965 in conjunction with the secondUnited Nationsworld population conference. He was also president of the British Society for Population Studies from 1979 to 1981. Among other honours, In 1997, he was the first recipient of the Olivia Schieffelin Nordberg award from the Population Council in New York.

He and Virginia had three children: Michael, Peter and Catherine.

Other sources

• Coleman, D. A. (2003). "Eugene Grebenik".Annals of Human Biology.30(6): 637–8.doi:10.1080/03014460310001607671.S2CID58847137.
• Kirk, Maurice (6 December 2001)."Eugene Grebenik: A versatile demographer in pursuit of truth".The Guardian.

External links

• Obituary