Leonid Hurwicz

Leonid Hurwicz (August 21, 1917 – June 24, 2008) was a Polish–American economist and mathematician, known for his work in game theory and mechanism design.

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

Hurwicz hired Evelyn Jensen (born October 31, 1923), who grew up on a Wisconsin farm and was, at the time, an undergraduate in economics at the University of Chicago, as his teaching assistant during the 1940s.

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.

His family eventually joined him there.

Encouraged by his father to study law, in 1938 Hurwicz received his LL.M. degree from the University of Warsaw, where he discovered his future vocation in economics class.

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

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

Hurwicz and his family experienced persecution by both the Bolsheviks and Nazis, as he again became a refugee when Germany invaded Poland in 1939.

His parents and brother fled Warsaw, only to be arrested and sent to Soviet labor camps.

In 1939 he moved to Geneva where he studied at the Graduate Institute of International Studies.

After moving to the United States he continued his studies at Harvard University and the University of Chicago.

Hurwicz had no degree in economics.

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

In 1941 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, Hurwicz taught electronics to the U.S. Army Signal Corps.

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

From 1942 to 1944, at the University of Chicago, he was a member of the faculty of the Institute of Meteorology and taught statistics in the Department of Economics.

About 1942 his advisors were Jacob Marschak and Tjalling Koopmans at the Cowles Commission for Research in Economics at the University of Chicago, now the Cowles Foundation at Yale University.

They married on July 19, 1944 and later lived at a number of locations in Minneapolis.

They had four children: Sarah, Michael, Ruth and Maxim.

His interests included linguistics, archaeology, biochemistry and music.

His activities outside the field of economics included research in meteorology and membership in the NSF Commission on Weather Modification.

Hurwicz received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1945–1946.

In 1946 he became an associate professor of economics at Iowa State College.

In 1946 he became an associate professor of economics at Iowa State College.

Hurwicz joined the University of Minnesota in 1951, becoming Regents' Professor of Economics in 1969, and Curtis L. Carlson Professor of Economics in 1989.

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

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

Hurwicz shared the 2007 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences (with Eric Maskin and Roger Myerson) for his seminal work on mechanism design.

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

In 2007 he said, "Whatever economics I learned I learned by listening and learning."

He was Regents' Professor of Economics (Emeritus) at the University of Minnesota when he died in 2008.

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

Interactions of individuals and institutions, markets and trade are analyzed and understood today using the models Hurwicz developed.

Hurwicz was born in Moscow, Russia, to a family of Polish Jews a few months before the October Revolution.

Soon after Leonid's birth, the family returned to Warsaw.

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

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

He died a week later in Minneapolis.