Paul Samuelson Papers Coming to Duke


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The papers of preeminent American economist Paul A. Samuelson 
(1914-2009) will be added to the Economists Papers Project in the 
Rare Book, Manuscript and Special Collections Library at Duke. 
Samuelson was the first American recipient of the Nobel Memorial 
Prize in economics.  Prior to his death on 13 December, Samuelson had 
made the decision to donate his papers to Duke where they will join 
the collections of his MIT Nobel Prize-winning colleagues Robert 
Solow and Franco Modigliani, as well as those of Nobelists Kenneth 
Arrow, Lawrence Klein (Samuelson's first Ph.D student), Douglass 
North, Vernon Smith, and Leonid Hurwicz.  The Economists Papers 
Project, developed jointly by Duke's History of Economics group and 
the Special Collections Library, is the most significant archival 
collection of economists' papers in the world.

Samuelson was the singular force leading to the post WWII 
reconceptualization of economics as a scientific discipline. His 
"neoclassical synthesis" wedded modern microeconomics to Keynesian 
macroeconomics, both of which were stabilized through his landmark 
Foundations of Economic Analysis (1947). His Principles of Economics 
textbook grounded the vocabulary, and teaching practices, of the 
economics profession in the second half of the twentieth century, and 
his career at MIT made that economics department the world leader in 
scientific economics.

Descriptions of the Economists' Papers at Duke are available at 
<http://library.duke.edu/specialcollections/collections/economists/collections.html>http://library.duke.edu/specialcollections/collections/economists/collections.html. 
The Paul Samuelson Papers will be transferred to Duke in stages over 
the next several months.  Those interested in conducting research in 
the Samuelson Papers when they are made available should contact Will 
Hansen (<mailto:[log in to unmask]>[log in to unmask]) for 
further information.

E. Roy Weintraub