Daniel McGill

McGill, a Wharton PhD, was recruited from a teaching post to direct the School’s newly created Pension Research Center (PRC) in 1952. An offshoot of Wharton’s Insurance Department, the PRC sprang up to study the growing corporate practice of providing retirement benefits as a part of an employee’s wage package. McGill remained the pension industry’s voice of reason well into his 70s. In 1993, for instance, he was tapped by the New Jersey Superior Court to assist in the rehabilitation of Mutual Benefit Life Insurance Company, seized by federal regulators after a run by policy holders. And the pension business, with the 2006 Pension Reform Act signed into law last year and as record numbers of companies freeze pension plan benefits, remains as complex and controversial as ever.