1. Lionel Robbins is known for his leadership at LSE, his proposed definition of economics, and for his instrumental efforts in shifting Anglo-Saxon economics from its Marshallian direction.
34 Facts About Lionel Robbins
1. 2.
Lionel Robbins was educated at home, at Hounslow College and at Southall County School.
3.
Lionel Robbins was in the Royal Field Artillery as an officer from August 1916 to 1918, when he was wounded by a sniper on 12 April in the Battle of the Lys and returned home with the rank of lieutenant.
4.
The campaign was an offshoot of the State Management Scheme set up during the war, and Lionel Robbins worked in Mecklenburgh Square, London for Mallon and Arthur Greenwood.
5.
In 1920, Lionel Robbins resumed studies at the London School of Economics, where he was taught by Harold Laski, Edwin Cannan and Hugh Dalton.
6.
Lionel Robbins had applied successfully to New College, Oxford for a fellowship in economics, with references from Alfred George Gardiner, Theodore Gregory and Graham Wallas.
7.
In 1927, Lionel Robbins returned to New College as a Fellow, but continued to teach at LSE, lecturing on a weekly basis.
8.
Lionel Robbins clashed with John Maynard Keynes in early October 1930, on the Committee of Economists of the Second MacDonald ministry.
9.
Lionel Robbins refused to sign a draft by Keynes of proposals including tariffs and wanted the chance to submit a minority report.
10.
Keynes as chair would not grant the request, given that Lionel Robbins was in a minority of one.
11.
Lionel Robbins, who had compared the protectionist views to those of Lord Rothermere and Lord Beaverbrook, walked out of a meeting, and briefed Philip Snowden against the report that contained a version of his criticism, considered himself poorly treated.
12.
Lionel Robbins's own 1934 treatise on the Great Depression is an analysis belonging to that period of his thought.
13.
Lionel Robbins joined the British government's Central Economic Information Service in summer 1940, from Cambridge to where the LSE had moved.
14.
The Service was split into the Central Statistical Office and the Economic Section, which Lionel Robbins headed as Director from September 1941.
15.
From 1942 Lionel Robbins worked largely on planning for post-war reconstruction, with Meade.
16.
When John Boyd Orr and Frank Lidgett McDougall successfully lobbied to put food security on the agenda of the United Nations, Lionel Robbins attended the resulting 1943 conference at Hot Springs, Virginia.
17.
Lionel Robbins represented the United Kingdom at the Bretton Woods Conference of 1944 and took part in the negotiation of the 1946 Anglo-American loan.
18.
Lionel Robbins became the first Chancellor of the new University of Stirling in 1968.
19.
Lionel Robbins advocated major government support for the arts, as well as universities.
20.
In later life, Lionel Robbins turned to the history of economic thought, publishing studies on English doctrinal history.
21.
Lionel Robbins is noted as a free market economist, and for his definition of economics.
22.
Skidelsky takes Lionel Robbins to be a possible but in any case rare example of a British continuator of John Neville Keynes and his Scope and Method of Political Economy.
23.
Lionel Robbins corresponded with the American Frank Knight from 1931 until Knight's death in 1972.
24.
Part of the intellectual framework was the insistence of Isaacs on the importance of inductive reasoning, where Lionel Robbins relied more naturally on deductions.
25.
Lionel Robbins became involved in the socialist calculation debate, taking the side of the Austrian School.
26.
Lionel Robbins was appointed a Companion of the Order of the Bath in the 1944 Birthday Honours.
27.
Lionel Robbins was elected an International Member of the American Philosophical Society in 1955.
28.
Lionel Robbins was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1966.
29.
Lionel Robbins received an Honorary Doctorate from Heriot-Watt University in 1967.
30.
The Lionel Robbins Building at the London School of Economics is named after him.
31.
The early paper The Representative Firm has been considered Lionel Robbins's most celebrated article.
32.
On 2 August 1924, Lionel Robbins married Iris Elizabeth Harris Gardiner, one of the daughters of the journalist and editor Alfred George Gardiner.
33.
Lionel Robbins's daughter married Christopher Louis McIntosh Johnson in 1958.
34.
Lionel Robbins's son was an artist and sculptor; the LSE has a bust of Lionel Robbins which was made by his son.