Kenneth Arrow
Kenneth Joseph Arrow (August 23, 1921 – February 21, 2017) was an American economist, mathematician, writer, and political theorist. Along with John Hicks, he won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1972.
Kenneth Arrow
August 23, 1921
February 21, 2017
- General equilibrium theory
- Fundamental theorems of welfare economics
- Arrow's impossibility theorem
- Endogenous growth theory
- John Bates Clark Medal (1957)
- Nobel Prize in Economics (1972)
- von Neumann Theory Prize (1986)
- National Medal of Science (2004)
- ForMemRS (2006)
In economics, Arrow was a major figure in post-World War II neoclassical economic theory. Many of his former graduate students have gone on to win the Nobel Memorial Prize themselves. His most significant works are his contributions to social choice theory, notably "Arrow's impossibility theorem", and his work on general equilibrium analysis. He has also provided foundational work in many other areas of economics, including endogenous growth theory and the economics of information.
Education and early career[edit]
Arrow was born on August 23, 1921, in New York City.[3] Arrow's mother, Lilian (Greenberg), was from Iași, Romania, and his father, Harry Arrow, was from nearby Podu Iloaiei.[4][5] The Arrow family were Romanian Jews.[3][6][7] His family was very supportive of his education.[3] Growing up during the Great Depression, he embraced socialism in his youth. He would later move away from socialism, but his views retained a left-leaning philosophy.[8]
He graduated from Townsend Harris High School and then earned a bachelor's degree in mathematics from the City College of New York in 1940, where he was a member of Sigma Phi Epsilon. He then attended Columbia University for graduate studies, obtaining a master's degree in mathematics in June 1941.[9] At Columbia, Arrow studied under Harold Hotelling, who influenced him to switch fields to economics.[8] He served as a weather officer in the United States Army Air Forces from 1942 to 1946.[10][3]
Awards and honors[edit]
Arrow was awarded the John Bates Clark Medal in 1957[26] and was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1959.[27] In 1968, he was elected to both the United States National Academy of Sciences[28] and the American Philosophical Society.[29] He was the joint winner of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics with John Hicks in 1972 and the 1986 recipient of the von Neumann Theory Prize.[9] He was one of the recipients of the 2004 National Medal of Science, the nation's highest scientific honor, presented by President George W. Bush for his contributions to research on the problem of making decisions using imperfect information and his research on bearing risk.[4][30]
He has received honorary doctorates from the University of Chicago (1967), the University of Vienna (1971) the City University of New York (1972).[9] On 2 June 1995 he received an honorary doctorate from the Faculty of Social Sciences at Uppsala University, Sweden.[31] He was elected a Foreign Member of the Royal Society (ForMemRS) in 2006.[32]
He was elected to the 2002 class of Fellows of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences.[33]
Personal life and death[edit]
Arrow was a brother to the economist Anita Summers, uncle to economist and former Treasury Secretary and Harvard President Larry Summers, and brother-in-law of the late economists Robert Summers and Paul Samuelson.[34] In 1947, he married Selma Schweitzer, graduate in economics at the University of Chicago[35] and psychotherapist, who died in 2015; they had two children, David Michael (b. 1962), an actor,[36] and Andrew Seth (b. 1965), an actor/singer.[9]
Arrow was well known for being a polymath, possessing prodigious knowledge of subjects far removed from economics. On one occasion (recounted by Eric Maskin), in an attempt to artificially test Arrow's knowledge, the junior faculty agreed to closely study the breeding habits of gray whales — a suitably obscure topic — and discuss it in his presence. To their surprise, Arrow already was familiar with the work they had studied and, in addition, thought it had been refuted by other research.[34]
Arrow died in his Palo Alto, California, home on February 21, 2017, at the age of 95.[34]