Harvard, on the other hand, was struggling. Their resistance to include mathematics in economics was holding them back. Chairman Harold Burbank ordered the printing plate of Samuelson's book to be destroyed after only 1,500 copies were printed. Edward Chamberlin, one of the school's leading professors, was being attacked for not giving a mathematical explanation of his work, in addition to moving away from the idea of perfect competition. Joan Robinson, another Harvard professor, had different ideas which led to a life-long rivalry between the two.
Monday, February 21, 2011
Chapter 9 Pages 119-121
After graduating from Harvard, Paul Samuelson took a job at MIT. During his time there, he continued to make a significant impact in his field. He became an advisor to President Kennedy, received the Nobel Prize in Economics, and wrote eighteen different editions of his textbook, Economics: An Introductory Analysis. He also made a considerable contribution writing drafts for Vannevar Bush's Science, the Endless Frontier, which helped government to create the National Science Foundation and sponsor the National Institutes of Health.
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A for Mitch; I'll forgive the missing "s" on plates — in 2011 a student might not know that each page was printed from its own plate.
ReplyDeleteAargh ... the original comment I posted disappeared. It's only been a few minutes, I hope it doesn't show up later.
The big picture here is that Harvard is the center of Keynsianism in the 1940's, but it starts branching out. Not for good reasons though — Samuelson is pushed out for doing too much math. So he goes to the engineering school across town where they don't have math anxiety. MIT wasn't known for economics then, but it's been a top 5 school for decades now (producing many famous economists, including Utah's bugbear Paul Krugman). Harvard got over its math anxiety by the 1960s and remains a top 5 school too.
The story hidden between the lines is that the city of Boston rather than the school in Boston is becoming the center of Keyensianism. This is important because the Democrats elect a president from Boston in 1960, who hires a lot of Keynesians for the White House. The Democratic party has been hung up on this theory ever since.