Joseph Alois Schumpeter was an Austrian political economist. He completed his PhD under Böhm Ritter von Bawerk‘s supervision at the University of Vienna. Schumpeter served briefly as Finance Minister of Austria in 1919. In 1932, he emigrated to the United States to become a professor at Harvard University. At Harvard young Richard Goodwin studied under Schumpeter, along with Paul Samuelson, Robert Solow and others. Many of them went to become prominent economists and won the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences.
Schumpeter has been very close to my heart, because of how he theorised evolutionary economic dynamics through creative destruction, and also because of his personal qualities.
Personal qualities???!
Yes, my supervisor was super kind and generous to us and often said he was greatly influenced by his Supervisor Richard Goodwin who was very kind and generous to him at Cambridge UK. And Goodwin in turn was greatly influenced by his supervisor Joseph Schumpeter at Cambridge, USA.
Genealogy
(12 February, 1851 – 27 August, 1914)
(8 February, 1883 – 8 January, 1950)
(24 February, 1913 – 13 August, 1996)
(25 September, 1947 – )
Even now I try to do, in my own small way, what my supervisors, his supervisors, their supervisors did to their students. That is to be kind and generous, and with intellectual integrity inspire the young minds…
Schumpeter’s ideas and theories are still very much relevant, and no wonder why his works are considered a classic! He was one of the great noble scholars..
I collect and read such classics, all with a hope that I might someday actually understand it…
In 1950, Joseph Alois Schumpeter, George F. Baker Professor of Economics, died early morning, on 8th January, at the age of 66. Death resulted from a cerebral hemorrhage while Schumpeter was sleeping in his country house in Taconic, Connecticut.
Funeral services will be held on 10th January 1950 at 2 p.m. at St. John’s Church in Salisbury, Conn.
On a cold crisp Sunday morning, I took the (rented) 2024 Mitsubishi Outlander for a 61 Miles drive (1 hour 16 minutes) to Salisbury Cemetery, CT, in hope to meet Schumpeter, and pay homage.
Reaching the destination, following the sign boards, was the easy part, on reaching I was overwhelmed by the size of the cemetery. So many have lived a fulfilling lives and are deservedly resting in the beautiful countryside.
The cemetery has 6 entries/exits and the sections within were not symmetrical or organized. I had to start somewhere so I took the first entry and slowly walked the narrow pathways…
I walked around so many lives; young and old, first settlers and recent, decorated and blanked…
In the end, after some searching, and despair that I might not be able to find the grave among the many, I finally found him…
Wondering who rests to the right off the Schumpeters?
Wassily Leontief (1905-99) was a Russian-born American economist who has been called the father of input-output analysis in econometrics.
Leontief won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1973, and four of his doctoral students have also been awarded the prize (Paul Samuelson 1970, Robert Solow 1987, Vernon L. Smith 2002, Thomas Schelling 2005).
DID YOU KNOW: it was Schumpeter who was instrumental in bringing the young Leontief to Harvard!
In 1933-34 Joseph Schumpeter introduced a undergraduate course “Introduction to the Mathematical Treatment of Economic Theory” at Harvard and taught the course three times and it was taught from 1935-48 by Wassily Leontief. The course was then continued by Richard Goodwin in 1949-50, before he left Cambridge MA to Cambridge UK.
When the Leontiefs (who had a summer house at Lakeville, CT) decided to be buried in the beautiful countryside (which for me resembled a lot like Austrian countryside), they approached the Salisbury town council to allocate space next to the Schumpeters…
…and, here they are…
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