40 Facts About Leonid Hurwicz

Leonid Hurwicz was a Polish-American economist and mathematician, known for his work in game theory and mechanism design.

Leonid Hurwicz originated the concept of incentive compatibility, and showed how desired outcomes can be achieved by using incentive compatible mechanism design.

Leonid Hurwicz was one of the oldest Nobel Laureates, having received the prize at the age of 90.

Leonid Hurwicz was educated and grew up in Poland, and became a refugee in the United States after Hitler invaded Poland in 1939.

In 1941, Leonid Hurwicz worked as a research assistant for Paul Samuelson at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Oskar Lange at the University of Chicago.

Leonid Hurwicz was a research associate for the Cowles Commission between 1942 and 1946.

Leonid Hurwicz was Regents' Professor of Economics at the University of Minnesota when he died in 2008.

Leonid Hurwicz was among the first economists to recognize the value of game theory and was a pioneer in its application.

Leonid Hurwicz, who had graduated from Warsaw University in 1938, at the time of Nazi invasion on Poland was in London, moved to Switzerland then to Portugal and finally in 1940 he emigrated to the United States.

When Eugene McCarthy ran for president of the United States, Leonid Hurwicz served in 1968 as a McCarthy delegate from Minnesota to the Democratic Party Convention and a member of the Democratic Party Platform Committee.

Leonid Hurwicz helped design the 'walking subcaucus' method of allocating delegates among competing groups, which is still used today by political parties.

Leonid Hurwicz remained an active Democrat, and attended his precinct caucus in February 2008 at the age of 90.

Leonid Hurwicz was hospitalized in mid-June 2008, suffering from renal failure.

Leonid Hurwicz then studied at the London School of Economics with Nicholas Kaldor and Friedrich Hayek.

In 1941 Leonid Hurwicz was a research assistant to Paul Samuelson at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and to Oskar Lange at the University of Chicago.

At Illinois Institute of Technology during the war, Leonid Hurwicz taught electronics to the US Army Signal Corps.

Leonid Hurwicz was a research professor of economics and mathematical statistics at the University of Illinois, a consultant to the RAND Corporation through the University of Chicago and a consultant to the US Bureau of the Budget.

Leonid Hurwicz continued to be a consultant to the Cowles Commission until about 1961.

Leonid Hurwicz was recruited by Walter Heller to the University of Minnesota in 1951, where he became a professor of economics and mathematics in the School of Business Administration.

Leonid Hurwicz spent most of the rest of his career there, but it was interspersed with studies and teaching elsewhere in the United States and Asia.

In 1955 and again in 1958 Leonid Hurwicz was a visiting professor, and a fellow on the second visit, at Stanford University and there in 1959 published "Optimality and Informational Efficiency in Resource Allocation Processes" on mechanism design.

Leonid Hurwicz taught at Bangalore University in 1965 and, during the 1980s, at Tokyo University, People's University and the University of Indonesia.

Leonid Hurwicz was a visiting Distinguished Professor at the University of Illinois in 2001.

Back at Minnesota, Hurwicz became chairman of the Statistics Department in 1961, Regents Professor of Economics in 1969, and Curtis L Carlson Regents Professor of Economics in 1989.

Leonid Hurwicz taught subjects ranging from theory to welfare economics, public economics, mechanisms and institutions and mathematical economics.

Leonid Hurwicz's interests included mathematical economics and modeling and the theory of the firm.

Leonid Hurwicz's published works in these fields date back to 1944.

Leonid Hurwicz is internationally renowned for his pioneering research on economic theory, particularly in the areas of mechanism and institutional design and mathematical economics.

Leonid Hurwicz was the graduate advisor to Daniel McFadden, who received the prize in 2000.

Leonid Hurwicz's work was instrumental in showing how economic models can provide a framework for the analysis of systems, such as capitalism and socialism, and how the incentives in such systems affect members of society.

Leonid Hurwicz co-edited and contributed to two collections for Cambridge University Press: Studies in Resource Allocation Processes and Social Goals and Social Organization.

Leonid Hurwicz was elected a fellow of the Econometric Society in 1947 and in 1969 was the society's president.

Leonid Hurwicz was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1965.

Leonid Hurwicz served on the United Nations Economic Commission in 1948 and the United States National Research Council in 1954.

Leonid Hurwicz was a member of the American Academy of Independent Scholars and a Distinguished Scholar of the California Institute of Technology.

Leonid Hurwicz received six honorary doctorates, from Northwestern University, the University of Chicago, Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona, Keio University, Warsaw School of Economics and Universitat Bielefeld.

Leonid Hurwicz was an honorary visiting professor of the Huazhong University of Science and Technology School of Economics.

Leonid Hurwicz combined Wald's ideas with work done in 1812 by Pierre-Simon Laplace.

The Leonid Hurwicz Distinguished Lecture is given to the Minnesota Economic Association.

Unable to attend the Nobel Prize ceremony in Stockholm because of his poor health, Leonid Hurwicz received the prize in Minneapolis.