Friedrich August von Hayek

Abstract

Friedrich August von Hayek, a central figure in 20th-century economics and foremost representative of the Austrian tradition, 1974 Nobel laureate in economics, a prolific author not only in the field of economics but also in the fields of political philosophy, psychology and epistemology, was born in Vienna on 8 May 1899. Following military service as an artillery officer in World War I, Hayek entered the University of Vienna, where he attended the lectures of Friedrich von Wieser and Othmar Spann and obtained doctorates in law and political science. After spending a year in New York (1923–4), Hayek returned to Vienna where he joined the famous Privatseminar conducted by Ludwig von Mises. In 1927 Hayek became the first director of the Austrian Institute for Business Cycle Research. On an invitation from Lionel Robbins, he lectured at the London School of Economics in 1931 and subsequently accepted the Tooke Chair. Hayek soon came to be a vigorous participant in the debates that raged in England during the 1930s concerning monetary, capital, and business-cycle theories and was a major figure in the celebrated controversies with John Maynard Keynes, Piero Sraffa and Frank H. Knight.