William Orville Douglas (1898-1980) had a short but remarkably productive career as an academic. Lured away from the University of Chicago in 1928, Douglas was at Yale for only five years before embarking on his long career in the public sector. In 1934 he started commuting between New Haven and Washington, D.C. to direct a study on creditor protective committees in corporate insolvency reorganizations for the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Douglas took a formal leave of absence in 1936 when he became a commissioner of the agency, and resigned in 1937 when he was appointed chairman of the Commission. In 1939, he was appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court, where he served until he retired in 1975.