Paul Samuelson — econ (nobel) with roots in the Russian Empire
Paul Samuelson was an American economist who won the first Nobel Prize in Economics awarded to an American (1970) and wrote Economics (1948) — the best-selling economics textbook of all time, translated into 40 languages. He modernised economics with mathematical rigour and trained a generation that includes multiple Nobel laureates.
Tracing the roots — Poland / Russia
Born in Gary, Indiana in 1915 to Frank Samuelson and Ella Lipton, both children of Polish and Russian Jewish immigrants, Samuelson grew up in the immigrant Jewish world of Chicago. He was Milton Friedman's peer and intellectual rival — both products of the same Eastern European Jewish immigrant generation, reaching opposite political conclusions from the same starting point.
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Poland / Russia. At the time, this region lay within the Russian Empire, which spanned from Poland to the Pacific.
A career defined by ambition
"Good questions outrank easy answers."