Integrator of modern economics, first American Nobel laureate in the field
An American economist, the first American to win the Nobel Prize in Economics, and one of the most influential economists of the twentieth century. With rigorous mathematics he re-founded the sprawling field, all but rewriting its methodology. He put forward the "neoclassical synthesis," seeking to fuse Keynes’s macro theory with traditional microeconomics. His textbook Economics ran the world for decades and was translated into dozens of languages, the first book by which countless people met economics — one might say all economics education in the second half of the twentieth century bore Samuelson’s stamp.
Samuelson has a famous line: "I don’t care who writes a nation’s laws — or crafts its advanced treaties — if I can write its economics textbooks." He knew well that shaping how a generation sees the economy, understands market and state, runs deeper than any single policy. His textbook quietly shaped half a century of economic common sense in just this way.
Below are how modern works borrow or reinterpret this name or story — not the original material. The two differ, so keep them apart.