Werken in dezelfde wijngaard
'The dream of any scholar has for me come true by virtue of this
award. The Nobel Prizes are justly famous in the hard sciences, in
literature, and for peace. Imagine then how my subject of economics
- the oldest of the arts, the newest of the sciences - has been
honored by the happy birthday thought of the Bank of Sweden to fund
an Alfred Nobel Memorial Awards in Economics.
Thanks too, on behalf of my profession must go for, if I may put
it so, the tolerance of the Nobel Foundation to let our subject tag
along in your festivities.
Last year's award in economics set an initial precedent hard,
perhaps impossible, to be maintained. According to the stern law of
diminishing returns, that is always to be expected. In the jargon
of American vaudeville, Professors
Frisch and
Tinbergen are a "hard act to follow." But then all my life I
have been following such great scholars and policy advisors as
these.
Now I must depart from my polished text of thanks. We have all
just heard Professor
Tiselius say that he did not know how to give advice on how to
get a Nobel Prize. I can tell you how. It is very easy.
The first thing you must do is to have great teachers. For the
sake of the economists present here, let me do some name-dropping
concerning my own good fortune in this regard. If you have had
Jacob Viner and Frank Knight and Paul Douglas as teachers, and then
went on to be blessed by having Joseph Schumpeter,
Wassily Leontief, Gottfried Haberler, and Alvin Hansen - then
you have met one necessary condition for the problem.
Second, you must also have been blessed with great colleagues,
collaborators, and fellow students. If you have had the chance to
work with people like Lloyd Metzler,
Robert Solow, and
James Tobin, you have met a second necessary condition - but
still not sufficient conditions.
Thirdly, you must have great students. I could keep you too long
mentioning MIT names, but let me merely sample the beginning,
middle and the end of the alphabet with the names of
Lawrence Klein,
Robert Mundell, and
Joseph Stiglitz. Still, we are only three-fifths of the
way.
A fourth necessary condition, and an important one from a
scholarly point of view, you must read the works of the great
masters. In these halls I can be forgiven for mentioning the names
of
Bertil Ohlin,
Gunnar Myrdal, Erik Lundberg and Ingvar Svennilson - and, of
course, Gustav Cassel, Erik Lindahl and the great Knut
Wicksell.
Four out of the five necessary conditions for scholarly success
have now been enumerated. Lest I delay your dancing, let me hasten
to name the final necessary condition that serves to complete the
sufficient conditions for a complete solution. The final element
is, of course, luck.
In closing let me acknowledge that I realize, that in honoring
me, the Committee of the Royal Academy of Sciences is in fact
saying a good word for all of those of my generation who have been
laboring in the same vineyard.'
Eerbetoon aan afwezige collegawinnaar
Bij deze gelegenheid nam Samuelson ook het woord om zicht te
richten tot de enige Nobel-winnaar die in dat jaar, 1970, niet
aanwezig mocht zijn. De gelauwerde literator van die avond bleef
vastzitten in Moskou. Alexander Sozhenitsyn had de kampen van
Stalin overleefd en zijn geest was ongebroken. Dat was genoeg om
hem blijvend te vervolgen.
Samuelson zei daarom het volgende: "Perhaps I may in concluding
be permitted to interrupt the gaiety of these ceremonials with one
note of regret. I speak to you from the mind. If
Alexander Solzhenitsyn had been here to speak from the heart,
from his heart, all of us would be the better for it, you and me,
all mankind and I dare to think every country under the
sun without a single exception. His spirit hovers over our
celebration here tonight."