By James R. Hagerty

Marina Whitman was thrilled when President Richard Nixon announced her appointment in January 1972 as one of three members of the Council of Economic Advisers, the first woman to serve in that role. He cited her "intellectual ability of the first magnitude."

Then she was annoyed when much of the reaction focused on her femininity rather than her intellect.

The Wall Street Journal reported that Nixon was "trying another surprise weapon in his effort to enliven the economy -- feminine charm." The Journal also described her as comely and noted that she wore "an emerald-green, deeply slit skirt." Alluding to her Hungarian ancestors, the syndicated columnist Nicholas von Hoffman dubbed her the "Zsa Zsa Gabor of economics."

Whitman, who died May 20 at the age of 90, resisted stereotypes. She dismissed a suggestion that she should accompany Nixon to a supermarket for a photo op in which they would display their anguish over the high cost of hamburger. At dinner parties, she refused to be herded into another room for lady talk while the men stayed at the table to discuss politics and policy.

Later, as a director of Procter & Gamble, she objected to ads in which a male authority figure enlightened grinning housewives. Women, she informed P&G executives, were perfectly capable of evaluating detergents and diapers on their own.

Sometimes she found herself in jobs where she struggled to make a difference. At General Motors in the 1980s, as chief economist and later as a vice president overseeing public affairs and marketing, she was unable to persuade the carmaker's top executives to take more drastic action to counter the rise of Japanese rivals.

A Martian father

Marina von Neumann was born on March 6, 1935, in New York. Her father, John von Neumann, a Hungarian-born immigrant, was a renowned mathematician who helped develop nuclear weapons during World War II and pioneered both game theory and computer design. In her 2012 memoir, "The Martian's Daughter," whose title refers to her father's otherworldly genius, she recalls his insistence that she excel in all subjects at school -- an A-minus would never do -- and chart an ambitious career. Her mother, Mariette Kovesi, also a Hungarian immigrant, pursued an administrative career outside the home but warned young Marina that she would repel suitors if she seemed too brainy.

Her parents divorced when she was an infant. Both remarried, leaving her to shuttle between households. In her memoir, Whitman depicts herself as "a plump, pigtailed, bespectacled little egghead, always at the top of her class in school but notably lacking in social graces."

Eccentricity ran in the family. Her father wore a three-piece suit for almost any occasion, including a tour of the Grand Canyon on the back of a mule. At her father's home, dinner guests included the physicists Edward Teller and Eugene Wigner, the author Arthur Koestler and the economist Oskar Morgenstern. Her cerebral father wore silly hats at parties, recited ribald limericks and had an "ability to down a remarkable number of martinis without any sign of impairment," Whitman wrote.

Her mother persuaded her to undergo cosmetic surgery to reshape her nose before heading off to Radcliffe College, a women's school affiliated with Harvard. She soon met a Harvard graduate student, Robert Whitman, who was heading into a career as an English professor. They married shortly after she graduated, at the top of her class, in 1956. Her father, who warned that marrying young would stunt her career, opposed the match.

During 68 years of marriage, however, Whitman found that her husband repeatedly encouraged her career, even when it meant uprooting the family.

Robert Whitman died in 2024. Their daughter, Laura M. Whitman, a physician who taught at the Yale School of Medicine, died in 2023. Marina Whitman is survived by her son, Malcolm, a professor of developmental biology at Harvard; two grandchildren; and a half brother, George Kuper.

A Rockefeller Republican

Though wary of mathematics, a subject in which she knew she could never live up to her father's standards, she earned a master's degree and a Ph.D. in economics at Columbia University. After her husband got a professorship at the University of Pittsburgh, she joined the economics faculty there.

Her career took a detour to Washington in 1970 when she was hired as a senior staff economist for the Council of Economic Advisers. Whitman, who described herself as a "moderate Republican in the mold of Dwight Eisenhower and Nelson Rockefeller," favored free trade as well as government support for U.S. companies hurt by surging imports.

A year later, her appointment to Nixon's new Price Commission created a dilemma. She disliked government restraints on prices, but wanted the job. In the end, she took it and sought to make price controls as flexible as possible. Then, in early 1972, she began her term as a member of the Council of Economic Advisers, focused on international trade and currency issues as U.S. trade deficits were bloating and the end of the gold standard made the dollar's value subject to market gyrations.

When she and other U.S. officials visited Tokyo for government talks, their Japanese hosts arranged separate entertainment: "While my male colleagues were being plied with drink and entertained by beautiful young women, I was struggling to stay awake through interminable hours of Kabuki theater."

Troubled by revelations from the Watergate hearings, she resigned in mid-1973. Her resignation letter to Nixon cited a plan to return to her academic career, however, rather than any concern over the scandal. Nixon's price controls failed to tame inflation, she wrote in her memoir: "I could take solace in the fact that my original skepticism about controls had been justified.... But I couldn't escape the reality that for nearly two years I had been the public face of a failed program."

'Pushy broad' advice

Her higher public profile led to directorships at P&G, Westinghouse Electric and a series of banks whose mergers created today's JPMorgan Chase. She served on the Harvard board of overseers and the Princeton board of trustees. Early in her career, she often found herself the only woman on a board.

In her memoir, she offered this advice to female directors: "Go girl; be a pushy broad and put some spine into whatever board you're on."

In the late 1970s, she hosted a short-lived PBS television series, "Economically Speaking," featuring discussion of economic issues, with guests including Walter Heller and Milton Friedman.

At GM, where she arrived in 1979, Whitman found "an ingrown, self-satisfied and self-destructive corporate culture." She also discovered shortcomings of her own: "I was a control freak, micromanaging people," she wrote, adding that she "didn't have the guts" to slash costs in the public affairs and marketing operations she eventually led.

Her sense of futility at GM helped induce a state of depression, for which she sought counseling. Realizing she was in a rut, she retired early from GM in 1992 and happily returned to teaching, this time at the University of Michigan.

Overall, she rated her career a success -- and proof that a woman could combine motherhood with demanding work outside the home, contrary to her father's warning. She dared think that even her demanding dad, who died in 1957, would have been proud of her achievements. "My father's shadow has lifted at last; if we meet again, it will be in sunlight," she wrote.

Write to James R. Hagerty at reports@wsj.com

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June 20, 2025 10:00 ET (14:00 GMT)

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