I am sorry to report that Aaron Director recently passed away, after having achieved the distinction of being a centenarian. (He was born in the Ukraine in 1901.) Director was one of the most important economists of the twentieth century.
He founded the Journal of Law and Economics, perhaps the most influential economics journal of the last fifty years. He also was a teacher of Robert Bork and Richard Posner, and led the application of law and economics to antitrust. Most generally, he was one of the critical oral sources of the Chicago school microeconomics tradition. Many in the know give Director a leading role in building up the economics, and law and economics traditions, at the University of Chicago. Director also was the brother of Rose Friedman, Milton Friedman’s wife.
The University of Chicago web site relates the following:
Kenneth Scott, an emeritus professor of law at Stanford University, recalls Director as a man of gentleness but also a rapier intellect.
“His comments in workshops were few but invariably penetrating,” Scott said. “They reminded me of a Thurber cartoon in which one fencer slices through the neck of the other (who seems not to realize what has just happened), saying merely `Touche.'”
Maurice Rosenfield, a retired Chicago lawyer who earned his J.D. degree at the University of Chicago, recalls Director as “an incredibly influential member of the faculty, among both students and also his colleagues. He was also the most interesting man you could imagine. He was always available to anyone with a question, and so wise and eloquent, and with such unique insights. Yet he carried no pretension—he was always gracious.”
The Washington Post writes:
Mr. Director was so adamant in his beliefs that he wrote to his sister, Rose, shortly before her marriage to Friedman in 1938, “Tell him I shall not hold his very strong New Deal leanings — authoritarian to use an abusive term — against him.”
Later Friedman, who became an icon of conservative economic thought, jokingly introduced Mr. Director as “my radical brother-in-law.”
Alex Tabarrok has linked to some tributes.
Update:
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