16 Facts About Frank Hahn

Frank Horace Hahn FBA was a British economist whose work focused on general equilibrium theory, monetary theory, Keynesian economics and critique of monetarism.

Frank Hahn was born on 26 April 1925 in Berlin to Arnold and Maria Hahn, their roots in German and Czech speaking Jewish communities respectively.

Arnold Frank Hahn was a chemist by profession and a writer.

Frank's older brother was Peter Hahn who became an eminent Czech research physiologist who had returned to Czechoslovakia after the War but was compelled to flee to Canada after the Prague Spring in 1968 in which he was active.

Peter and Frank Hahn were educated at Bournemouth School from when they were 15,13 respectively, a school for which Frank Hahn retained an abiding enthusiasm.

Frank Hahn too became a navigator in the RAF in the Second World War, then resumed his interrupted higher education, not reading Mathematics at Balliol College, Oxford, but instead reading Economics at the London School of Economics.

Frank Hahn met at LSE and in 1946 married Dorothy Salter, an economist and secretary to FA Hayek.

Frank Hahn started his teaching career with a lectureship at Birmingham in 1948.

Frank Hahn took his doctoral degree in 1951 at the London School of Economics for the thesis The share of wages: an enquiry into the theory of distribution, where he was supervised initially by Nicholas Kaldor and later by Lionel Robbins.

Frank Hahn began his teaching career in 1948 at the University of Birmingham, where he was elected Reader in Mathematical Economics.

Frank Hahn remained Professor of Economics at Cambridge until his retirement in 1992, though he made near-annual visits to the US, especially as visiting professor at Harvard University, the MIT, and the University of California, Berkeley, as well as to Stanford's Institute of Mathematical Studies in the Social Sciences.

From 1990 to 1996 Frank Hahn directed the PhD program of the Economics Department at the University of Siena.

Frank Hahn gained widespread recognition and attention in 1981 as the co-instigator of a letter to The Times signed by 364 of Britain's best-known economists, questioning Margaret Thatcher's economic policy, with a warning that it would only result in deepening the prevailing depression.

Frank Hahn in turn influenced a large number of colleagues and students.

Frank Hahn died in Cambridge on 29 January 2013, following a short illness.

Frank Hahn is survived by his wife Dorothy, nee Salter, whom he had married in 1946.