Milton Friedman was born in Brooklyn, New York, to recent Jewish immigrants Sára Ethel (née Landau) and Jenő Saul Friedman, from Beregszász in Carpathian Ruthania, Kingdom of Hungary (now Berehove in Ukraine), both of whom worked as dry goods merchants. Shortly after Milton's birth, the family relocated to Rahway, New Jersey. In his early teens, Friedman was injured in a car accident, which scarred his upper lip. A talented student, Friedman graduated from Rahway High School in 1928, just before his 16th birthday. In 1932 Friedman graduated from Rutgers University, where he specialized in Mathematics and Economics and initially intended to become an actuary. During his time at Rutgers, Friedman became influenced by two economics professors, Arthur F. Burns and Homer Jones, who convinced him that modern economics could help end the Great Depression. After graduating from Rutgers, Friedman was offered two scholarships to do graduate work — one in mathematics at Brown University and the other in economics at the University of Chicago. Friedman chose the latter, thus earning a Master of Arts degree in 1933. He was strongly influenced by Jacob Viner, Frank Knight, and Henry Simons. It was at Chicago that Friedman met his future wife, economist Rose Director. During the 1933–1934 academic year he had a fellowship at Columbia University, where he studied statistics with renowned statistician and economist Harold Hotelling. He was back in Chicago for the 1934–1935 academic year, working as a research assistant for Henry Schultz, who was then working on Theory and Measurement of Demand. That year, Friedman formed what would prove to be lifelong friendships with George Stigler and W. Allen Wallis. Friedman was initially unable to find academic employment, so in 1935 he followed his friend W. Allen Wallis to Washington, where Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal was "a lifesaver" for many young economists.[22] At this stage, Friedman said that he and his wife "regarded the job-creation programs such as the WPA, CCC, and PWA appropriate responses to the critical situation," but not "the price- and wage-fixing measures of the National Recovery Administration and the Agricultural Adjustment Administration."[23] Foreshadowing his later ideas, he believed price controls interfered with an essential signaling mechanism to help resources be used where they were most valued. Indeed, Friedman later concluded that all government intervention associated with the New Deal was "the wrong cure for the wrong disease," arguing that the money supply should simply have been expanded, instead of contracted.[24] In the publication, A Monetary History of the United States, 1867–1960 by Friedman and Anna J. Schwartz, they argue that the Great Depression was caused by monetary contraction, which was the consequence of poor policymaking by the Federal Reserve System and the continuous crises of the banking system. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milton_Friedman Rose Director Friedman (December, 1910 – 18 August 2009), also known as Rose D. Friedman and Rose Director, was a professor at the University of Chicago Law School. She was the wife of Milton Friedman (1912–2006), who won the 1976 Nobel Prize in Economics, and sister of Aaron Director (1901–2004). She is believed to have been born the last week of December, 1910; however, the birth records have been lost. She was born in Staryi Chortoryisk, in Ukraine, to the Director family, prominent Jewish residents. Rose Friedman attended Reed College and later transferred to the University of Chicago where she received a Bachelor of Philosophy degree. After this she began to study for a doctorate in economics at the University of Chicago and completed all work necessary for the Ph.D. except for writing the dissertation. In her youth, she wrote articles with Dorothy Brady to justify the Keynesian vision of consumption. She received an honorary LL.D. in December 1986 from Pepperdine University. With her husband, she co-wrote two books on economics and public policy, Free to Choose and Tyranny of the Status Quo, and their memoirs Milton and Rose D. Friedman, Two Lucky People, which appeared in 1998. Together they founded the Milton and Rose D. Friedman Foundation, with the aim of promoting the use of school vouchers and freedom of choice in education. She also helped produce the PBS television series, Free to Choose, and assisted her husband in writing his 1962 political philosophy book Capitalism and Freedom. When Milton received his Medal of Freedom in 1988, President George H. W. Bush said jokingly in his speech that Rose was known for being the only person to ever have won an argument against her husband. The Friedmans have two children, Janet and David. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rose_Friedman

• published: 10 Sep 2014
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