The American economist and editor Edwin Robert Anderson Seligman (1861-1939) was known as editor in chief of the Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences and for editing the Columbia University Studies in History, Economics, and Public Law.

On April 25, 1861, Edwin R. A. Seligman was born in New York City, where his father was a banker of some prominence in both national and international financial circles. For his early education (until the age of 11) he was tutored at home. He then entered the innovative Columbia Grammar School, and at the age of 14 he entered Columbia College, where he received his bachelor's degree in 1879. He then went abroad to study at universities in Berlin, Paris, and Heidelberg.

In 1882 Seligman returned to Columbia to pursue simultaneously graduate studies in economics and in law; he received his master's in economics and was admitted to the New York State bar in 1884. In the same...