Description
Book Synopsis“A fascinating, exciting story.”
— Sylvia Nasar, author of A Beautiful Mind
While still in his early 20s, and under Hitler's shadow, Leonid “Leo” Hurwicz (1917-2008) left his home in Warsaw, Poland, seeking safety and a degree at the London School of Economics. The following years, while challenging and potentially life-threatening, contained the seeds of a lifelong intellectual adventure. Leo's story is personal (born a refugee, precarious war years for himself and his Polish-Jewish family, a new life in America), global (revolutions, wars, depressions), ideological (socialism, capitalism, economic planning, free markets) and professional (a sixty-year career as a professor of economics leading ultimately to a Nobel Prize). This book tells his story.
Trade Review“A fascinating, exciting story.”
— Sylvia Nasar, author of A Beautiful Mind
“Before he became an economist, Leo Hurwicz led a dramatic life worthy of a Hollywood movie. Michael Hurwicz tells this story with verve, and also succeeds in explaining to a lay readership the deep contributions his father made to economic science. Terrific reading.”
— Eric Maskin, Nobel laureate in Economics, Harvard University
“Kudos to Michael Hurwicz, who has written a paean to his late father, Leo Hurwicz, an extraordinary economist, teacher, polymath, and polyglot, whose genial personality and sense of humor endeared him to many in the profession. Especially for those of us who primarily knew Leo in an academic context, this book provides the background story of his life and times. It is meticulously researched and well-written.”
— Samiran Banerjee, Teaching Professor of Economics at Emory University and editor of The Collected Papers of Leonid Hurwicz: Volume 1
“Michael Hurwicz gives us a unique attempt to clarify, for all those who knew Leo Hurwicz, the complex history of his family. Many of us who knew Leo had only a fragmentary understanding of this story. Michael tells it with loving care. He then proceeds to interweave ideas from Leo's work and to show, with tenderness, aspects of Leo as a father. A remarkable achievement.”
— Thomas Marschak, University of California, Berkeley, CA
“Hurwicz tells the story of a remarkable man. A man, who received a Nobel Prize in Economics at age 90, who was married to the same woman, Evelyn, from age 27 until his death, who was the father of four children, who was an excellent pianist with a repertoire that reached from Beethoven to folk songs, an inspired — and inspiring — teller of bed-time stories, a life-long learner and knower of, almost, everything, an active citizen, and, yes, did I mention the Nobel Prize in Economics at age 90?
And Leo Hurwicz achieved all of this in spite of — or should we say, because of — the times of existential peril through which he and his extended family lived. … It is a context of revolutions, wars, antisemitism, persecution, and genocide. But it is also a context of resistance, persistence, ingenuity, courage, and creativity, of humanity in the face of barbarism.”
— Jens Kruse, The Orcasonian
Table of ContentsAcknowledgements
Prologue
1939, sierpień/août/August
Born a Refugee
Now or Never
Home Safe?
Get an Education!
The Miracle
Hurwicz Home School
Crisis, Coup, Catastrophe
Astrophysics, Chopin and Jazz
Economics and Einstein
Socialist Calculation
Brown Shirts and Ghetto Benches
Graduation Getaway
Math, Models and Mechanisms
Government Intervention
A Lifeline
Hurwiczes on the Run
An Intellectual Warrior at the School for Peace
Leo Hurwicz: “Excess Foreign Population”
Geneva to Chicago by Way of Locarno, Barcelona and Lisbon
Chicago and MIT
Surprise Attack
Honey
A Little Bit Unruly
The Great Book Review
A Slow and Difficult Process
Just a Closer Walk with Stan
Blood, Fire, Smoke, Exile and Human Kindness
Mechanism Design: Development and Recognition
Appendix A. Leo’s Memorial
Appendix B. A Celebration of Leo's 90th Birthday, Held at the Holiday Inn Metrodome, 1500 Washington Avenue South, in Minneapolis on April 14, 2007
Appendix C. The Theory of Economic Behavior, by Leonid Hurwicz
Appendix D. The Hurwicz Criterion
Appendix E. Edited transcript of 2007 interview with Leo, conducted by the author
Appendix F. A Timeline of the Life of Leo Hurwicz
Appendix G. What Is Mechanism Design?
