Matt raises a number of interesting issues about what constitutes scholarship in the history of economic thought. [See http://eh.net/pipermail/hes/2005-January/002814.html] I suspect that while everyone respects Bob's work, that he was not selected because of a belief by some in the organization that Bob was more a popularizer than a scholar of the history of thought. My own view (not surprisingly) is that popularizing of the sort that Bob did (his was the first book that I read in economics) should be rated very highly, but that view is not shared by everyone. I think we might start a new thread of discussion entitled, What Makes a Distinguished Fellow? [I changed Dave's subject to his suggested new thread. HB] Dave Colander