Economists around the world are mourning the loss of Paul Samuelson. He was a Nobel Prize laureate with ties to the Chicago area.
In 1970, Bruce MacLean invited Samuelson to speak before the economic honors society at the University of Illinois Chicago.
MacLean wasn’t sure if Samuelson, who won the Nobel Prize that year, would attend.
But when MacLean told Samuelson that Milton Friedman recommended him, Samuelson accepted.
MacLean is now director of graduate programs at Valparaiso University. He says Samuelson will remembered for his teachings.
MACLEAN: The simple supply and demand curves and how things move when market forces change and how you find a new equilibrium with price and the quantities the market demand. All that way of presenting this complex economic data was all designed by Paul.
Samuelson was born in Gary, Indiana. His family later moved to Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood. Samuelson would enroll at the University of Chicago at the age of 16.
He was 94 years old when he died Sunday at his home in Massachusetts.