Recognized for his research on the workings of industry and the role of government regulation in the economy. A great champion of deregulation, his studies have attacked rent controls, minimum wage laws, and the antitrust laws. The first Nobel economist to have written extensively about the history of economics.

The Nobel Committee recognized Professor Stigler “for his seminal studies of industrial structures, functioning of markets and causes and effects of public relation.

Biography:

George Stigler was born January 17, 1911, in Renton, Washington, a suburb of Seattle. He was the only child of Joseph and Elizabeth Hungler Stigler, who had separately migrated to the United States at the end of the nineteenth century, his father from Bavaria, his mother from what was then Austria-Hungary. George writes that his "father had been a brewer until prohibition drove that activity underground. Thereafter, he tried a variety of jobs," finally entering the real estate market. "My parents bought rundown places, fixed them up, and sold them. By the time I was sixteen, I had lived in sixteen different places in Seattle. But my parents had a comfortable if nomadic existence" (Stigler, 1988, pp. 9-10).

George went to public schools and then to the University of Washington, all in Seattle, receiving a B.A. in 1931. "An insatiable and utterly indiscriminate reader," he "got lots of good grades" at the University of Washington. He said that, when he graduated from college, he had "no thought of an academic career"; it was the depression and jobs in business were scarce, so he applied for and was awarded a fellowship at Northwestern University for graduate study in the business school, receiving an M.B.A. in 1932 (Stigler, 1988, p. 15). At Northwestern he developed an interest in economics and decided on an academic career. He returned to the University of Washington for one further year of graduate study, and then received a tuition scholarship to study economics at the University of Chicago. There he found an intense intellectual atmosphere that captivated him. Chicago became his intellectual home for the rest of his life, as a student from 1933 to 1936, a faculty member from 1958 to his death in 1991, and a leading member of and contributor to the "Chicago School" throughout. He received his Ph.D. in 1938.

At Chicago, Stigler was particularly influenced by Frank H. Knight, under whom he wrote his dissertation--a noteworthy feat, since only three or four students ever managed to complete a dissertation under Knight in his twenty-eight years on the Chicago faculty. Stimulating and influential in both economic analysis and social philosophy, Knight was a perfectionist and tended to inhibit students who came under his influence. It is a mark of Stigler's character and drive that he never succumbed to that aspect of Knight's influence; rather, he imbibed what he described as Knight's "devotion to the pursuit of knowledge . . . a sense of unreserved commitment to 'truth'" (Stigler, 1988, pp. 17-18).

The other faculty members whose influence George stressed were Jacob Viner, who taught economic theory and international economics; John U. Nef, economic historian; and their younger colleague Henry Simons, who became a close personal friend and whose A Positive Program for Laissez Faire greatly influenced Stigler and many of his contemporaries.

"At least as important to me," wrote George, "as the faculty were the remarkable students I met at Chicago," and he goes on to list W. Allen Wallis; the author of this memoir; Kenneth Boulding and Robert Shone from Great Britain; Sune Carlson from Sweden; Paul Samuelson; and Albert G. Hart--all of whom subsequently had distinguished careers (Stigler, 1988, pp. 23-25).

I overlapped George at Chicago for one year, 1934-35, during which he, W. Allen Wallis, and I formed what proved to be a lifelong friendship. As it happened, all three of our future spouses were also students at Chicago. George was to marry Margaret Mack, always known as Chick, who was majoring in social science. Allen would marry Anne Armstrong, an art history major, and I married Rose Director, whose major was economics. We soon formed a sextuple whose lives were intertwined from then on.

In 1936 George accepted an appointment as an assistant professor at Iowa State College (now University), and shortly thereafter was married to Margaret "Chick" Mack. George and Chick had three sons: Stephen, a professor of statistics at the University of Chicago; David, a corporate lawyer; and Joseph, a businessman. The family suffered a tragic loss in 1970, when Chick died unexpectedly, without any advance warning. George never remarried.

George accepted an appointment at the University of Minnesota in 1938 and then went on leave in 1942 to work first at the National Bureau of Economic Research and later at the Statistical Research Group of Columbia University, a group directed by Allen Wallis that was engaged in war research on behalf of the armed services. When the war ended in 1945, George returned to the University of Minnesota, but he remained only one year, leaving in 1946 to accept a professorship at Brown University. That simple statement conceals a traumatic experience. In George's words: "In the spring of 1946 I received the offer of a professorship from the University of Chicago and, of course, was delighted at the prospect. The offer was contingent upon approval by the central administration after a personal interview. I went to Chicago, met with the president, Ernest Colwell--because Robert Hutchins was ill that day--and I was vetoed! I was too empirical, Colwell said, and no doubt that day I was. So the professorship was offered to Milton Friedman, and President Colwell and I had launched the Chicago School" (Stigler, 1988, p. 40). It speaks volumes for George's character that the incident never cast the slightest shadow on our friendship.

In 1946 George and I were two of the thirty-six participants at a conference in Switzerland convened by Friedrich A. Hayek to discuss the dangers to a free society. The Mont Pelerin Society was founded at that conference and has since grown and flourished, providing a forum for members from all over the world to discuss the issues involved in achieving and maintaining political and economic freedom. An active member of the society until his death, George served as its president from 1976 to 1978.

After a year at Brown, George moved to Columbia, where he remained until 1958, despite several attempts by Theodore Schultz, chairman of the Chicago Department of Economics, to bring him to Chicago. In 1958 Allen Wallis, then dean of the University of Chicago business school, persuaded him to accept the Charles R. Walgreen professorship of American institutions. George remained at Chicago for the rest of his life. At Chicago he became an editor of the Journal of Political Economy; established the Industrial Organization Workshop, which achieved recognition as the key testing ground for contributions to the field of industrial organization; and in 1977 founded the Center for the Study of the Economy and the State, serving as its director until his death.

In the academic year 1957-58, George was a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford. From 1971 to his death, George was a fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford, and spent part of almost every year at Hoover.

George was president of the American Economic Association in 1964, and of the History of Economics Society in 1977. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1975. He received the Alfred Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science in 1982 "for his seminal studies of industrial structures, functioning of markets and causes and effects of public regulation." He received the National Medal of Science from Ronald Reagan in 1987.

George's governmental activities included service as a member of the attorney general's National Committee to Study the Antitrust Laws, 1954-55; chairman, Federal Price Statistics Review Committee, 1960-61; member, Blue Ribbon Panel of the Department of Defense, 1969-70; vice-chairman, Securities Investor Protection Corporation, 1970-73; co-chairman, Blue Ribbon Telecommunications Task Force, Illinois Commerce Commission, 1990-91.

A word about George as a person: In the nearly six decades of our friendship, I never knew him to do a mean or hurtful or unworthy thing to anyone. An ideal friend in time of trouble, he would go to any lengths to be helpful.

He always appeared casual and unhurried, seeming to have ample time for golf (his favorite sport), tennis, bridge, carpentry, photography (his favorite hobby), casual talk with friends, consultations with students, and constructive and detailed criticisms of the writings of his students and academic friends. Yet, he also was incredibly productive, turning out a steady stream of fundamental contributions. Truly, as his son Stephen said at a memorial service, "My father had phenomenal energy."

One feature of George's personality that he did his best to conceal was his extreme personal sensitivity. His smart cracks were in part a way of covering that sensitivity, as was his half-embarrassed laugh. He was as sensitive to others as to himself. The stiletto concealed in his humor was always meant for ideas or policies, never ad hominem--unless "An Economist Plays with Blocs" (1954), his brilliant title for an article on Galbraith's theory of countervailing power, can be so interpreted.

George was a delightful correspondent. Serious and profound discussion never came without an interlarding of amusing comments. In a letter from London in 1948 when he was giving Five Lectures on Economic Problems (1949), after remarking on the inconvertibility of the pound and the inedible, still-rationed food, he concluded, "So here I am losing weight and gaining pounds."

George was an extremely valuable colleague. He provided much of the energy and drive to the interaction among members of the Chicago economics department, business school, and law school that came to be known at the Chicago School. His workshop on industrial organization was an outgrowth of a law school seminar started by Aaron Director, which George cooperated in running when he came to Chicago. His relations were especially close with Aaron, Gary Becker, Richard Posner, Harold Demsetz, and myself, enhancing significantly the scientific productivity of all of us.

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