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JUNE 2005

Nobel Laureates Around the Nation
Kenneth Arrow, Stanford
University

I attended Townsend Harris High School, a special high school (entrance by examination) run by The City College in 1933-6.  Its staff included several Ph.D.’s, mostly of whom were hoping for a university position. They were perfect for me. I remember a French teacher, Leo Cortines; he was a tyrant and perfectionist, and I disliked him while in his class, but immediately understood what I had learned from him afterwards. I also remember two mathematics teachers, Irwin Rothman and Rene Albrecht-Carrie; the latter eventually became a professor of history at Columbia.

In City College, I majored in mathematics, with side interests in history, education, and economics (really statistics).  There was one great mathematics teacher, Bennington Gill; the rest of the faculty were helpful without being outstanding.

In my graduate education at Columbia, I had several fine teachers, especially Harold Hotelling, to whom I owe very much indeed in many ways, and Abraham Wald.

I had two significant challenges. One was to stay the academic course. My parents had undergone great economic insecurity, and I wanted to avoid that. In the postwar period, I was tempted to go into some private financially rewarding activity. Both Hotelling and another economist, Tjalling Koopmans, prevented this. The other was to write a dissertation that would satisfy the high aspirations that I had for myself and that I felt others had for me. After years of work with little to show, a chance question to me led me in a few days to a brand-new idea that satisfied me and others.

Winning the Nobel Prize obviously was very pleasant, and it has given me some influence. But my own judgment of myself and the judgment of those I respect is much more important.

My current work involves two main lines of research. One is an attempt to bring meaningful models to the extent to which economic behavior is influenced by social interactions; the other is to improve the measurements of the economic impacts of environmental failures.

On stem cell research: I am a layman in this area. It clearly has great potential, and its study should be pursued. But I do think that some respect must be paid to those whose religious convictions lead to judgments on the value of potential human life, even though I think these judgments are incorrect. The distinction between therapeutic and genetic stem cells seems just about right to me.

My reflections on the 100th anniversary of Einstein’s seminal work: the idea that one person could write four basic papers on very distinct branches of physics and have them published in one year is so beyond the norm that one can only marvel. It is a tribute to the possibilities of humanity. #

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