1213 Paul Samuelson, R.I.P.

December 13, 2009, 1:15 pm

Paul Samuelson, R.I.P.
ポール・サムエルソン　ご冥福をお祈りします
Oh, my. Paul Samuelson has died. He had a long, good life; yet he will be sorely missed.
ポール・サムエルソンが亡くなった。彼は長く、素晴らしい人生を送ったけど、その死は惜しまれる。
It’s hard to convey the full extent of Samuelson’s greatness. Most economists would love to have written even one seminal paper — a paper that fundamentally changes the way people think about some issue. Samuelson wrote dozens: from international trade to finance to growth theory to speculation to well, just about everything, underlying much of what we know is a key Samuelson paper that set the agenda for generations of scholars.
サムエルソンの偉大さを全て伝えるのは無理だよ。ほとんどのエコノミストは、根本的に人々の物事に対する考え方を変えてしまうような影響力の大きい論文を書くことを熱望している。
サムエルソンは、それを何十も書いた。国際貿易に関するものから金融、成長論、投機、など、あらゆるジャンルに及ぶ我々が知っていることの多くは、サムエルソンの論文が多数の学者に考えるきっかけを与えている。

And he was a wonderfully down-to-earth human being besides. For a number of years I shared an office suite with him and Bob Solow; he always had time to talk, and was completely without airs.
さらに、彼は地に足の着いた素晴らしい人物だった。何年にもわたり、私は、彼とボブ・ソロウとオフィススィーツソフトを共有していており、いつも話機会があったが、彼は気取った雰囲気は全くなかった。

One of the things Robin Wells and I did when writing our principles of economics textbook was to acquire and study a copy of the original, 1948 edition of Samuelson’s textbook. It’s an extraordinary work: lucid, accessible without being condescending, and deeply insightful. His discussions of speculation and monetary policy are particularly striking: they run quite contrary to much of what was being taught just a few years ago, but they ring completely true in the current crisis. And he was, of course, the man who truly brought Keynesian economics to America — a contribution that now seems more relevant than ever.



Let us honor the memory of a truly great man.