City College alum, Kenneth Arrow wins Noble Prize (1972) and National Medal of Science (2004). KenArrow CityCollege
alum, Kenneth Arrow shared the 1972 Nobel Prize in Economics with John Hicks of
the UK
"for their pioneering contributions to general economic equilibrium theory
and welfare theory."
Dr. Arrow was also awarded the 2004 National
Medal of Science, the nation's highest prize in science, for contributions in
the areas of making decisions using imperfect information and of bearing risk.
Ken Arrow had a vast and powerful impact on the profession of economics. It is
thought that he is one of the "most listened to" of all practicing
economists for more than 50 years. His most notable achievements are his
contributions to social choice theory, particularly "Arrow's impossibility
theorem", and his work on general equilibrium analysis. He has also provided
foundational work in many other areas of economics, including endogenous growth
theory and the economics of information.
Dr. Arrow was born in New York City
on August 23, 1921. He
graduated from The City College of New York in 1940 with a bachelor's of
science degree in social science and a major in mathematics.
"My undergraduate education, at the CityCollege in New
York, was made possible only by the existence of that
excellent free institution and the financial sacrifices of my parents.”
Although he entered ColumbiaUniversity
in 1941 for his MA in mathematics and remained there to complete his PhD in
economics, World War II interrupted Dr. Arrow's graduate work. From
1942-1946 he served as a weather officer in the US Army Air Corps rising to the
rank of Captain. The research he conducted there would be the basis for
his first published paper, On the Optimal Use of Winds for Flight Planning.
In 1949, Dr. Arrow was appointed Acting Assistant Professor of Economics and
Statistics at StanfordUniversity
and remained there until 1968, becoming eventually Professor of Economics,
Statistics, and Operations Research. In 1968, he accepted an appointment as
Professor of Economics at HarvardUniversity
where he remained until 1979. Then he returned to Stanford University to take
the position of Joan Kenney Professor of Economics and Professor of Operations
Research until is retirement in 1991.
His compelling and diverse life's work focused on urban crises, management
science, public investment, economic development, and the economics of racial
discrimination.
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