"In this age of specialization, I sometimes think of myself as the last 'generalist' in economics," wrote Paul Anthony Samuelson, Professor of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, "with interests that range from mathematical economics down to current financial journalism. My...

I was born in Russia in 1901, of Jewish parents, and came to the United States in 1922 to join my father who left Russia for the United States before World War I. My university studies began in Russia, and were completed at Columbia University (B.Sc. in 1923, M.A. in 1924, Ph.D. in 1926). It was...

I wrote "The Market for 'Lemons,'" (a 13-page paper for which I was awarded the Prize in Economics) during my first year as assistant professor at Berkeley, in 1966-67.* "Lemons" deals with a problem as old as markets themselves. It concerns how horse traders respond to the natural question: "if...

Lecture to the memory of Alfred Nobel, April 27, 1973

Lecture to the memory of Alfred Nobel, December 11, 1975

Lecture to the memory of Alfred Nobel, December 11, 1973

I was born in Petersburg (Leningrad) on 19th January 1912. My father, Vitalij Kantorovich, died in 1922 and it was my mother, Paulina (Saks), who brought me up. Some of the first events of my childhood were the February and the October Revolutions of 1917, and a one-year trip to Byelorussia...

I studied economics and made it my career for two reasons. The subject was and is intellectually fascinating and challenging, particularly to someone with taste and talent for theoretical reasoning and quantitative analysis. At the same time it offered the hope, as it still does, that improved...

Lecture to the memory of Alfred Nobel, December 13, 1976

Nobel Lecture to the memory of Alfred Nobel, December 8, 1982