Hollander, Jacob H. (1871-1940) | Rare Book & Manuscript Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Jacob Harry Hollander was born in Baltimore, Maryland to Rosa Meyer and Meyer Hollander in 1871. After attending local public and private schools, as well as one year at the Pennsylvania Military Academy, Hollander graduated from Johns Hopkins University in 1891. He received a Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins in 1894, when he joined the faculty, and he became a full professor in 1904. As a professor of political economy, Hollander focused on the life and works of the English economist David Ricardo.

Throughout his career, Hollander accepted a variety of governmental assignments, and the first of which was an appointment by President William McKinley to the Bimetallic Commission in 1897. In 1900, he was appointed Treasurer of Puerto Rico and implemented the Hollander Tax. Hollander resigned the position in August 1901, and the Department of the Interior sent him to Native American territory in Oklahoma in 1904 as a special agent. President Theodore Roosevelt appointed Hollander as a financial advisor to the Dominican Republic from circa 1905-1910; Hollander would later support Roosevelt in his 1912 presidential campaign. He was an advocate of Prohibition and, following World War I, a pacifist. Hollander died in 1940.