Paul Samuelson

Today's papers marked the death of Professor Paul Samuelson, a real, trail-blazing economist. His Foundations of Economic Analysis, which I read for my introductory graduate school course in microeconomic theory, really turned my head around, as it was a masterful application of rigorous mathematics to economic markets and behavior. The book, which is much more influential and better done than his textbook, won a Wells Prize for Harvard dissertations in 1941. In one of my introductory operations research courses, I later ran across his writing again in Dorfman, Samuelson and Solow, "Linear Programming and Economic Analysis, affectionately known as DOSSO, that took some dry theoretical concepts and applied them to real-life problems. Again, Professor Samuelson fired my imagination. I mourn the passing of a real intellectual giant who advanced knowledge that benefited many disciplines.