- Person
- Robert Solow
- Lived
- 1924–2023
- Field
- Economics
- From
- American
The story
Robert Solow grew up in Brooklyn, the oldest of three children of a fur merchant whose own parents had been immigrants. A standout student, he won a scholarship to Harvard and arrived there in September 1940, aged sixteen. Like many children of the Depression, he was curious about what made society tick, and his first studies were in sociology with Talcott Parsons and anthropology with Clyde Kluckhohn, along with elementary economics.
By the end of 1942, with the United States at war and Solow just turned eighteen, he decided there were more urgent matters than his studies. He left the university and enlisted in the US Army, where he served in the Signal Corps. Because he knew German, the Army placed him in a unit whose job was to intercept and interpret German radio messages and send them back to base.
He served briefly in North Africa and Sicily, and then in Italy from the beginning of the campaign there to the end of the war. Much of the time the unit worked in specially equipped trucks just behind the front, in conditions that MIT later described as seemingly risky. He was discharged in August 1945. Throughout those years he and Barbara Lewis, a Radcliffe student, exchanged V-letters, the wartime mail for troops overseas, and they married in the summer of 1945, soon after he came home.
Solow believed those three years as a soldier formed his character. In his Nobel autobiography he described being part of a tight-knit group doing a hard job with skill and mutual loyalty, led by one of the most remarkable men he had ever known, who never wavered from humour and decency. He found the same spirit only twice more, on President Kennedy's Council of Economic Advisers and in the MIT economics department, and he sought it in every team he joined.
Back at Harvard, he turned, almost casually, to economics, encouraged in part by Barbara's own interest in the subject, and studied under Wassily Leontief. In 1949 he joined MIT, where his work on economic growth won him the 1987 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. The young man who had listened to German army radio traffic in Italy became one of the economists who explained how economies grow richer.
Why it matters
Solow served his country in the war against Nazi Germany before going on to a career that reshaped economics.
About Robert Solow
MIT economist whose growth model showed that technological progress, not just capital and labour, drives rising living standards; Nobel laureate in 1987 and teacher of Nobel winners.
More about Robert Solow
- Robert Solow's 1956 model explained how economies growIn 1956 Robert Solow published a simple model showing that adding machines and workers alone cannot keep an economy growing; lasting growth needs technical progress.
- Solow showed technology drove 80% of US growthIn 1957 Robert Solow used US data to show that roughly four-fifths of growth in output per worker came from technical progress, not just more capital.
- Robert Solow helped found MDRC to test anti-poverty programsIn 1974 Robert Solow helped found the Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation, a pioneer in rigorously testing programs that help disadvantaged workers.
Sources
- Robert M. Solow, Biographical NobelPrize.org
- Institute Professor Emeritus Robert Solow, pathbreaking economist, dies at age 99 MIT News
- Robert Solow Wikipedia
Another act of tikkun olam. This is part of tikkun olam, the Jewish idea of repairing the world, and every one of us can add to it.