Murray Rothbard

In 1953, Rothbard got married to JoAnn Schumacher in New York City. The couple remained married to each other until Rothbard’s death and did not have any children.

He died in 1995 in Manhattan of heart attack. He was survived by his wife, who also passed away four years after his death.

Murray Rothbard was born in Bronx, New York to Jewish immigrant parents, David and Rae Rothbard. His father was a chemist and the Rothbard family lived on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.

He was a brilliant student and attended a private school called Birch Wathen. He attended the Columbian University where he did his major in mathematics and economics.

Rothbard attended a seminar of Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises in the 1950s; Mises was teaching at the Wall Street division of New York University Business School at the time. He got greatly influenced by him.

Between 1950s and 1960s, the William Volker Fund, a group that provided financial support to the ‘right wing’ ideologies, financed Rothbard’s ‘Man, Economy and State’, which finally got published in 1962.

In 1964, Rothbard started teaching economics to engineering students at the Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute. During this time he published works like, ‘The Panic of 1819: Reactions and Policies (1962)’, etc.

His next set of works included, ‘Power and Market: Government and the Economy (1970)’, ‘‘America’s Great Depression (1973)’, ‘For a New Liberty (1973)’, ‘Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature and Other Essays (1974)’, ‘The Essential von Mises, "Bramble Minibook" (1973)’, etc.

Besides publishing ‘Conceived in Liberty (1975)’, during the late 1970s, Rothbard also founded the Centre for Libertarian Studies (1976) and the Journal of Libertarian Studies (1977).

During the 1980s, he was involved with foundation of Ludwig von Mises Institute in Alabama (1982), and became the vice president of academic affairs. He also started a journal, ‘Review of Austrian Economics (1987)’, (now ‘Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics’).

Rothbard’s prominent role in the history is established through his books on anarchist theory, revisionist history, and economics; and his founding and leading the concept of anarcho-capitalism, through which he became the outstanding figure in 20th century American libertarian movement.