My appreciation of economics, no less than the history of economic thought,
took a giant step forward when I first began to interact with Warren
Samuels at the History of Economics Society meetings in 1991. Over the
years it became abundantly clear that I would not adequately perform my job
as economics editor at Cambridge University Press until I had found a
substantive way to invite Warren to make a contribution to the economics
list. It was the Press's good fortune to have Warren agree to revise a set
of essays on the invisible hand for publication, ably aided by Marianne
Johnson and William Perry. The essays will appear in September. I trust it
will serve as a testament to Warren's enormous intellectual and analytical
gifts that he shared so unstintingly.

Scott Parris
Senior Editor, Economics and Finance
Cambridge University Press, New York



From:	"Mr. e" <[log in to unmask]>
To:	[log in to unmask]
Date:	08/18/2011 12:45 PM
Subject:	Re: [SHOE] RIP, Warren J. Samuels (1933-2011)
Sent by:	Societies for the History of Economics <[log in to unmask]>



The field of the history of economic thought has seen many leaders come and
go, but few have become institutions … Warren Samuels was, is, and always
will be an institution.  His breath of knowledge and his depth of heart
have been an inspiration to those ever so many whom he encouraged and
nurtured during his many years.  I count myself as blessed to have been in
that number.

                               Jerry Evensky

Jerry Evensky
Professor of Economics
Meredith Professor for Teaching Excellence
Syracuse University

From: Societies for the History of Economics [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
Behalf Of Ross Emmett
Sent: Thursday, August 18, 2011 11:13 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [SHOE] RIP, Warren J. Samuels (1933-2011)

Warren Samuels passed away yesterday at his home in Gainesville, Florida.
Warren was an eminent historian of economic thought, whose work ranged
across the field’s breadth. His first published works in the field were a
pair of articles on the physiocratic system (published in the Quarterly
Journal of Economics) that served to reshape thinking about the
physiocratic view of the economic role of the state. On the other end of
the time spectrum, he was a pioneer in doing and encouraging work on the
history of post-war economics. This breadth of scholarship is exemplified
nicely in the book that he completed not long before his death, Erasing the
Invisible Hand: Essays on an Elusive and Misguided Concept in Economics,
which was brought to completion with the assistance of Marianne Johnson and
will be released by Cambridge University Press in September. We’ve suffered
a great loss as an intellectual community in his passing.

Many of you knew Warren well, so there is no need to rehearse at length his
publications or his forays into many other areas of economics. Warren was
one of the first historians of economics to treat the history of economics
as a branch of intellectual history. This was, for him, a part of the
larger intellectual conversation about the role of governments and markets
in modern society that was his lifelong pursuit. His well-known studies of
policy in classical economics (The Classical Theory of Economic Policy) and
in Pareto (Pareto on Policy) were major contributions to that discussion.
His perspective had a significant effect on the students who studied with
him over the years, and on those of us who were the recipients of his
comments and advice at conferences and via correspondence.

From the outset of his career, Warren recognized the importance to the
intellectual historian of correspondence, course notes, unpublished
manuscripts, public lectures, etc. What we now collectively refer to as
archival materials. Not only did he promote the use of these materials in
historical research, but he also amassed an extensive personal collection
of these materials, which he began to publish in 1989 in archival
supplements to Research in the History of Economic Thought & Methodology.
The very first supplement contained the notes he had obtained from
economist Robert L. Hale and Sinologist Homer H. Dubs of John Dewey’s
course on Moral and Political Philosophy at Columbia University. The second
supplement contains the only authorized publication of Frank Knight’s
infamous lecture on “The Case for Communism.” Warren and George Stigler
went back and forth for some time regarding the publication of that piece!
Dewey and Knight were, perhaps not surprisingly, two of Warren’s
intellectual heros. The materials he amassed will continue to be published
in the research annual for many years to come. His collection of
photographs of economists is already available online from the Center for
the History of Political Economy at Duke University.

Warren was also a tireless editor of volumes that touched upon almost any
aspect of his wider interests. I have lined up on my bookshelf over 80
volumes that he edited on the history of economics, economic methodology,
or recent economic thought. Mine is probably not a complete set! All of
these were undertaken to encourage scholarship in areas that interested him
(and, by extension, which he thought would interest others). Many of them
are also the means by which he encouraged the work of young scholars.

We all experienced his generosity to students, young scholars and anyone
else who wanted to join the great conversation. His goal and passion was to
broaden and enrich that conversation, and he was as happy to engage a young
scholar as he was a Nobel laureate. To that end, he and Sylvia made a
substantial contribution to the History of Economics Society to endow its
Young Scholars program.

Among the many professional societies to which he belonged, the History of
Economics Society was always the one closest to Warren’s heart. He was a
founding member of the Society, and served as its 8th President. The
Society honored him in 1997 with its Distinguished Fellow award; two years
earlier he was the recipient of the Association for Evolutionary Economics
Veblen-Commons Award. He was the long-time editor of the Journal of
Economic Issues and the founding editor of Research in the History of
Economic Thought & Methodology.

I wish to acknowledge the helpful advice I received from Jeff Biddle,
Marianne Johnson and Steve Medema.