William McCarthy, professor in the Department of Accounting and Information Systems at Michigan State University’s Broad College of Business and original designer of the Resource-Event-Agent, or REA, accounting model, will be inducted as the 128th member of the Accounting Hall of Fame in August 2026. 

The honor will be conferred by the American Accounting Association during its 2026 Global Connect meeting in Las Vegas, Nevada. The recognition marks a career that has reshaped the conceptual foundations of accounting systems and bridged the disciplines of accounting, computer science and information systems in ways that continue to influence both scholarship and practice.

McCarthy’s groundbreaking work began with his doctoral dissertation at the University of Massachusetts, where the conceptual foundations of REA first took shape. Those ideas were refined through rigorous review and ultimately published in two landmark papers in the Accounting Review during his time as an assistant professor at Michigan State University. The second paper, published in July 1982 and titled “The REA Accounting Model: A Generalized Framework for Accounting Systems in a Shared Data Environment,” became the seminal exposition of REA. Its subtitle signaled a bold vision — one centered on interoperability and ontology — that would define McCarthy’s research trajectory for decades.