I’ve just learned that the distinguished business historian Chris Kobrak has died. I’ve known Chris from conferences for a number of years and over the course of the last eighteen months I got to know him quite well. I deeply respected Chris as a human being and a scholar and proximity to him caused me to be a better person by being more international, more financially literate,  more generous with money, and to pay more attention to ethics. When I say pay attention to ethics, I do not  mean to suggest that I was unethical before I met Chris. Rather, I mean that I am more conscious of ethical issues when engaged in writing and thinking about business history and in thinking university teaching and life more generally.

To understand why Chris was an important figure in the global business history community, we need to consider his family background and career…