Paul Samuelson

Paul Samuelson received his PhD from Harvard University and spent his entire career at MIT, where he helped build one of the world's foremost economics departments. He received the first Nobel Prize in Economics awarded to an American (1970). His 1947 book 'Foundations of Economic Analysis' unified disparate areas of economic theory through rigorous mathematical methods, essentially creating the modern mathematical economics discipline. His introductory textbook 'Economics' (first published 1948) became the best-selling economics text ever written, going through 19 editions and selling over 4 million copies — introducing generations of students to mainstream economic thinking. Samuelson made foundational contributions to general equilibrium theory, public goods theory, welfare economics, and the theory of revealed preference. He was a prominent public intellectual who wrote a regular Newsweek column for decades. His formulation of the efficient markets hypothesis in the context of financial markets, combined with his advocacy for passive index funds, made him one of the intellectual predecessors of the indexing revolution. Samuelson passed away in December 2009 at age 94.