Dear Colleagues,

I would like to join those honoring Mark's memory.

Mark was my PhD supervisor (together with John Maloney) and although he had the reputation of being tough, I have a very fond memory of him as supervisor.  (Incidentally, when I started considering contacting him to ask whether he would be willing to be my supervisor a senior colleague suggested me to think twice because I would be heading for a difficult experience. Fortunately, I decided to take the risk and I feel honored that he was my supervisor),

Mark was a compulsive reader and had an outstanding erudition in the history of economics, in economics, and beyond. He was known for not expressing his views mildly, but he was willing to reconsider his views and to be convinced that he had got it wrong (and he recognized in print a few times that he had changed his mind). He was not a man of minutiae and this may have hindered his perceptions on some issues, but he was sharp and was known for being extremely perceptive when reading an article or book or listening to a presentation.
Mark was a fantastic debater. It was an enormous pleasure seeing him "in action", especially against his intellectual "bêtes noires".  Mark was also a fantastic storyteller and it is unfortunate that he did not want to write his memories, because very few people were such a witty and privileged observer of economics over the last 60 years (several of us tried to convince him, but he thought it was not too important).

I would only add a story that many of you may know and that he told me when I was starting my PhD:
When in the early 1950s Mark went to see George Stigler (at that time Professor at Columbia), asking him to be his supervisor and telling him that he wanted to work on HET, Stigler told him to change his mind about doing a thesis in HET. Mark insisted and eventually Stigler accepted, but he warned him that he would pay a price for that (his other supervisor was Terence Hutchison).
Mark could have changed his mind and most likely he would have enjoyed having a rather comfortable life at an elite Department in the US (apparently, the reason James Tobin gave him for not granting him tenure at Yale was because they were not interested in having a specialist in HET).
However, Mark decided to devote most of his academic career to an area that he knew was losing visibility, but that provided him with deep intellectual satisfaction. In doing so, he made a great service to our field.

I am quite confident that his legacy is far greater and enduring than that of many Ivy League economists that have been granted tenure over the years.

Pedro




Pedro Nuno Teixeira

Director - CIPES, Centre for Higher Education Policy Studies
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Associate Professor - Faculty of Economics, University of Porto
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Visiting Fellow, OxCheps, New College, Oxford University, Oct 2011- Feb 2012