Thomas Childs Cochran (April 29, 1902 – May 2, 1999) was an American economic historian.
for almost twenty-five years before joining the University of Pennsylvania in 1950, where he became Benjamin Franklin Professor of History, a position from which he retired in 1972.
[3] In the mid-20th century, Cochran was one of the most significant economic historians of the United States, producing The Age of Enterprise (1961), an important work on the history of American capitalism.
Throughout his career, he attempted to examine the history of business not merely as a narrowly economic topic, but also as a cultural one.
He opened up new methodological approaches and areas of research in the field of economic history.