Economist's Essentials

Samuelson: influential economist. Life Magazine

Preeminent American economist Paul A. Samuelson, who died last year, was known for combining modern microeconomics with Keynesian macroeconomics, and his research made him the first American recipient of the Nobel Prize in economics. His textbook, Principles of Economics, influenced the vocabulary and teaching practices of the economics profession in the second half of the twentieth century.

Now, Samuelson's papers will reside at Duke, where researchers will be able to study his work and that of other significant economists. The papers will join the Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library's Economists Papers Project, where the work of Samuelson's colleagues—Robert Solow and Franco Modigliani, among others—are also kept. The collection was developed by Duke's History of Economics group in partnership with special collections.