Charles Wiggins Cobb was an American mathematician and economist. He published many works on both subjects, however he is most famous for developing the Cobb–Douglas formula in economics. He worked on this project with the economist Paul Douglas

Paul Douglas

Paul Howard Douglas was an liberal American politician and University of Chicago economist. A war hero, he was elected as a Democratic U.S. Senator from Illinois from in the 1948 landslide, serving until his defeat in 1966...

 while lecturing at the Amherst College

Amherst College

Amherst College is a private liberal arts college located in Amherst, Massachusetts, United States. Amherst is an exclusively undergraduate four-year institution and enrolled 1,744 students in the fall of 2009...

 in Massachusetts

Massachusetts

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. It is bordered by Rhode Island and Connecticut to the south, New York to the west, and Vermont and New Hampshire to the north; at its east lies the Atlantic Ocean. As of the 2010...

. In 1928, Charles Cobb and Paul Douglas published a study in which they modeled the growth of the American economy during the period 1899-1922. They considered a simplified view of the economy in which production output is determined by the amount of labor involved and the amount of capital invested. While there are many other factors affecting economic performance, their model proved to be remarkably accurate. He also authored a number of books and pamphlets in his time including, 'The asymptotic development for a certain integral function of zero order,' in 1913, while working to attain his doctorate in Mathematics.