Frank Hahn

Frank's older brother was Peter Hahn (8 November 1923 – 28 August 2007) 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 were educated at Bournemouth School from when they were 15, 13 respectively, a school for which Frank retained an abiding enthusiasm.

Peter started at Swansea University but joined the Czechoslovak squadron of the RAF during the War.

Frank 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 Horace Hahn FBA (26 April 1925 – 29 January 2013) was a British economist whose work focused on general equilibrium theory, monetary theory, Keynesian economics and critique of monetarism.

A famous problem of economic theory, the conditions under which money, which is intrinsically worthless, can have a positive value in a general equilibrium, is called "Hahn's problem" after him.

One of Hahn's main abiding concerns was the understanding of Keynesian (Non-Walrasian) outcomes in general equilibrium situations.

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 Hahn was a chemist by profession and a writer.

Arnold and Maria Hahn with their two sons, Peter and Frank, moved to Prague in 1931 (or possibly 1934) and left for England in 1938.

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

He is survived by his wife Dorothy, née Salter, whom he had married in 1946.

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

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

Frank Hahn took his doctoral degree in 1951 at the London School of Economics (LSE) 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.

As a student, he had been part of the Hayek–Robbins seminar at LSE, and he once said his wife had been an original member of the Mont Pelerin Society.

In 1960 he joined the University of Cambridge—as a Fellow of the new Churchill College and as University Lecturer in Economics.

In 1967 he was appointed Professor at the London School of Economics (though he apparently continued to reside in Cambridge).

Five years later he left the LSE appointment to become Professor at Cambridge.

His inaugural lecture at Cambridge "On the notion of equilibrium in economics" was delivered on 28 February 1973.

He 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, by his own admission, was influenced in economics by John Hicks, W. M. Gorman, Takashi Negishi and Kenneth Arrow among others.

He in turn influenced a large number of colleagues and students.

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

He eventually became emeritus professor at Cambridge.

He 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.

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