Cornell University has lost a longtime accounting professor whose work spanned financial research, classroom teaching and university leadership.
Thomas Dyckman, an emeritus professor at the Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management, died Oct. 30 in Naples, Florida, at 94, according to Cornell University.
Dyckman joined Cornell as an associate professor in 1964 and became a full professor in 1968. He was named the Ann Whitney Olin Professor of Accounting in 1977 and retired to emeritus status in 2007.
His research helped examine how accounting disclosures affect stock prices. Over his career, he published more than 60 articles and 11 books or monographs, while teaching thousands of students.
Research and teaching shaped his career
The American Accounting Association recognized Dyckman's research in 1966 for an article examining earnings and inventory accounting. He also coauthored the 1975 book “Efficient Capital Markets and Accounting: A Critical Analysis.”
Robert Libby, a Cornell accounting professor, described a colleague whose work reached across behavioral and experimental research, capital markets and analytical managerial accounting. That range also informed Dyckman's work with students and other researchers.
Dyckman received multiple teaching awards, including the American Accounting Association's Outstanding Accounting Educator Award. In 2018, Johnson named its MBA award for excellence in accounting after him.
His professional service extended to the organizations that shape accounting standards. He served on the Financial Accounting Standards Advisory Council from 1984 to 1987 and as a trustee of the Financial Accounting Foundation from 1989 to 1993.
He was the American Accounting Association's director of research from 1976 to 1978 and its president in 1981-82. He entered the Accounting Hall of Fame in 2009.
Leadership at Johnson and Cornell
Dyckman served as Johnson's associate dean for academic affairs from 1984 to 1994 and as acting dean during the 1990s. He later served as Cornell's vice president for information technologies in 1998-99.
Former Johnson dean Joseph Thomas remembered Dyckman for combining research, teaching and leadership rather than treating those responsibilities as competing pursuits.
Before coming to Cornell, Dyckman earned a bachelor's degree in actuarial mathematics, an MBA and a doctorate in accounting at the University of Michigan. He served in Navy intelligence from 1955 to 1958 and taught at the University of California, Berkeley.
After retiring from Cornell, he continued teaching for a decade as an adjunct professor at Florida Gulf Coast University.
He is survived by his wife, Ann; four children; 10 grandchildren; and 11 great-grandchildren.
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