Hurwicz, Leonid

YEARS IN THE DEPARTMENT:

1950-1952

RESEARCH INTEREST:

Mechanism Design

BIOSKETCH:

Leonid Hurwicz was born August 21, 1917 in Moscow. A mere three months after his birth, the Bolshevik Revolution began in Russia, which caused the Hurwicz family to flee to Warsaw due to fear of political persecution. It was at the University of Warsaw where Hurwicz received his LL.M. degree in 1938, and he subsequently enrolled at the London School of Economics. In 1939, Germany invaded Poland, and Hurwicz and his Jewish family once again became refugees.

When the UK refused to extend his visa in 1939, Hurwicz made it his goal to immigrate to the United States. He succeeded in doing so in 1940, and moved in with his cousins in Chicago. Hurwicz received a job offer from MIT later that year, where he worked under renowned economist Paul Samuelson. He returned to Chicago in 1941, and began teaching statistics at the University of Chicago in 1942.

Hurwicz eventually joined the University of Illinois in 1950 as part of a new group of faculty hired by Dean Howard Bowen. This group eventually came under fire from the established professors from the Department of Economics, who claimed the newer, younger professors were too liberal politically and economically; this controversy emerged at the height of the McCarthy era. The tension ultimately led to Bowen’s ousting as dean, causing many of his hires, including Hurwicz, to resign in protest.

Hurwicz joined the University of Minnesota shortly after leaving Illinois, where he would teach for the next fifty years. He became the chairman of the Statistics Department in 1961 and was named the Regents Professor of Economics in 1969. Much of his work focused on how economic models can be used to analyze societal systems such as socialism or capitalism, and how the incentives in systems like these can impact individuals in that society.

In 1988, Hurwicz retired from full time teaching at the University, though he continued to teach graduate courses and research until 2006. He became the oldest economist to be named a Nobel Laureate in 2007, at the age of 90, for his work in welfare economics and mechanism design. Leonid Hurwicz would die less than a year later, on June 24, 2008.

PHD:

University of Warsaw (LL.M), 1938

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS:

Hurwicz, Leonid, and Stanley Reiter. Designing Economic Mechanisms. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Internet resource.
Arrow, Kenneth J, and Leonid Hurwicz. Studies in Resource Allocation Processes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977. Print.
Arrow, Kenneth J, Leonid Hurwicz, Hirofumi Uzawa, and Hollis B. Chenery. Studies in Linear and Non-Linear Programming. Stanford, Cal: Stanford University Press, 1958. Print.
Papandreou, Andreas G, O H. Sauerlender, O H. Brownlee, Leonid Hurwicz, and William M. H. Franklin. A Test of a Stochastic Theory of Choice. , 1957. Print.
Schmookler, Jacob, Zvi Griliches, and Leonid Hurwicz. Patents, Invention, and Economic Change. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971. Internet resource.

VITA: