Ten Ways to Know Paul A. Samuelson

Abstract

I am honored to have been invited to give this talk. The invitation delights me for both personal and professional reasons. My mission as one of the first speakers is to bring all-embracing harmony to this festive assembly. Let me explain. Any one of you deserves more to be in my place. However, had any one of you been invited to deliver the opening talk, this might have caused some dissension. The question: "Why not me?" might have reverberated through this hall. So, the organizers, in their deep Cambridge wisdom, came up with an ideal solution. "Michael Szenberg. Here is an economist from a smaller pond, whose appearance will not generate ill feelings." What will permeate this hall is admiration for Paul. In the words of Kierkegaard "admiration is a happy self surrender." In his lectures, Paul often opens with anecdotes that serve as a light introduction for the substantive analysis that follows. In the spirit of his lectures, my talk will be a warm-up for the main event. I will present selected vignettes that portray Paul's personality and character with, I hope, insight and humor. To quote Nigel Rees: "An anecdote can often say more about a person than pages of biography" (1999, ix). An historian once noted that in time the legacy of any individual can be distilled into succinct sound bytes. Think of Presidents Washington, Lincoln, and Franklin D. Roosevelt.