Paul Samuelson

In the prime of his career as a professor, Paul Samuelson was extremely active and lively. He used to explain theories developed by him with splendid gust and vitality. He also felt strongly about the ‘gender pay gap’ in America.

Samuelson married his classmate Marion Crawford in 1938. The couple had six children of who the last three children were triplet boys. The names of his children areJane, Margaret, William, Robert, John and Paul in chronological order.

Marion died in 1978; he later married Risha Clay Samuelson but didn’t have any children with her. Samuelson died on the 13 December 2009 at 94 following ashort term illness.

Paul Anthony Samuelson was born in Indiana on 15 May 1915 to a pharmacist father, Frank Samuelson, and a caring mother, Ella Lipton, during World War I. His family members were Jewish immigrants from Poland. He also had a brother named Robert.

His father encountered major financial strain after the war ended and in order to seek better opportunities, Frank took his wife and sons and moved to Chicago in 1923.

Paul began his education at Hyde Park High School studying the stock market, but it was at the University of Chicago, where Samuelson was born again, as an economist.

He was only 16 years old when he entered the Chicago University;at the university he studied about esteemed economists such as Thomas Robert Malthus who inspired his love for the subject.

Soon after his graduation in 1935, he went on to pursue his Masters of Arts where his flair for the subject intensified. He was awarded his master’s degree a year later in 1936.

After he completed his Ph.D. at the age of 25 years in 1941, he received an offer from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and was appointed instantly as an assistant professor.

He was also made a member of the Radiation Laboratory in 1944, where he developed computers to track aircrafts and worked as a part-time International Economic Relations professor at Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy.

By the time he was 32, he had been authorizedas a full-time professor at the Massachusetts Institute. Around this time he was also made advisor and consultant of two significantboards the National Resources Planning Board plus the War Production Board and Office of War Mobilization and Reconstruction.

From 1945 to 1952, he worked as an advisor to the United States Treasury;in 1960-1961 he servedas a member ofthe National Task Force on Economic Education.

In 1965 Paul Samuelson was made president of the International Economic Association. At the Association,he assumedthe responsibility of teaching and interpreting Keynesian economics to fundamental units of the American Government i.e. American presidents, the Federal Reserve Board and selected members of the Congress.

He had mastered Keynesian economics that pertained to the amount of influence an aggregate of demand projected on the economic output of a country during recession. Although he didn’t agree with all the principles, he found no reason to reject some of the tenets.

Thus, with this knowledge heextended his service as a member of thePresident’s Council of Economic Advisers to senator and later PresidentJohn F. Kennedy, making suggestions and recommendations on tax cuts that would in turn keep a check on repression.