*Founder of Modern Economics: Paul Samuelson*

That is the new and truly excellent biography of Paul Samuelson, by Roger E. Backhouse, volume I alone, which covers only up to 1948, is over 700 pp.  So far I find it gripping, here is one bit:

…he ascribed his intelligence to genetics: “I began as an out-and-out believer in heredity.  My brothers and I were smart kids.  My cousins all weighed in above the average.  He was congenitally smart and made no secret of it, at one point noting in the early 1950s he was prescribed some medication that dulled his mind, giving him for the first time insight into “how the other half lives.”

Are you up for a 14 pp. discussion of what Samuelson learned from Gottfried Haberler?  I sure am…and if you are wondering, Lawrence Klein was the first student to complete a PhD in economics at MIT.

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