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Leonid Hurwicz
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Polish-American economist and mathematician (1917–2008)
Leonid Hurwicz was a Polish-American economist and mathematician who made important contributions to understanding how economic systems and institutions work. His research on mechanism design—the study of how to structure rules and incentives to achieve desired economic outcomes—helped earn him the Nobel Prize in Economics and influenced how governments and organizations approach policy and decision-making.
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Nobel Prize
- The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel2007
“for having laid the foundations of mechanism design theory”
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Wikidata facts
- Instance of
- human
- Given name
- Leonid
- Gender
- male
- Citizenship
- United States
- Place of birth
- Moscow
- Place of death
- Minneapolis
- Occupation
- university teacher
- Educated at
- Graduate Institute of International Studies
- Employer
- Illinois Institute of Technology
- Languages spoken
- Polish
- Field of work
- economics
- Image
- Leonid Hurwicz (square).jpg
Show 8 more facts
- Commons category
- Leonid Hurwicz
- date of birth
- 1917-08-21
- date of death
- 2008-06-24
- member of
- Econometric Society
- maintained by WikiProject
- WikiProject Mathematics
- cause of death
- kidney failure
- manner of death
- natural causes
- interested in
- economics
Sources (6)
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Encyclopedic overview
Leonid Hurwicz ( Polish pronunciation: [lɛˈɔɲit ˈxurvitʂ]; August 21, 1917 – June 24, 2008) was a Polish–American economist and mathematician, known for his work in game theory and mechanism design. He originated the concept of incentive compatibility, and showed how desired outcomes can be achieved by using incentive compatible mechanism design. Hurwicz shared the 2007 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences (with Eric Maskin and Roger Myerson) for his seminal work on mechanism design. Hurwicz was one of the oldest Nobel Laureates, having received the prize at the age of 90.
Hurwicz was educated and grew up in Poland, and became a refugee in the United States after Hitler invaded Poland in 1939. In 1941, Hurwicz worked as a research assistant for Paul Samuelson at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Oskar Lange at the University of Chicago. He was a research associate for the Cowles Commission between 1942 and 1946. In 1946 he became an associate professor of economics at Iowa State College. Hurwicz joined the University of Minnesota in 1951, becoming Regents' Professor of Economics in 1969, and Curtis L. Carlson Professor of Economics in 1989. He was Regents' Professor of Economics (Emeritus) at the University of Minnesota when he died in 2008.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Leonid Hurwicz” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.