Legendary Economist Paul Samuelson Dead at 94

Paul A. Samuelson, the first American Nobel laureate in economics and a familiar name to generations of college students, died today at his home outside Boston. He was 94. Ben Bernanke praised his former MIT professor as "a titan of economics," and a colleague said of their fellow academics, "No one was more important in providing the tools they use and the ideas that they employ than Paul Samuelson."

Samuelson's Economics, first published in 1948 and translated into 20 languages, was the best-selling American textbook for 3 decades. It remains popular even now, in its 19th edition, reports the Wall Street Journal. "More than any other contemporary economist, he has contributed to raising the general analytical and methodological level in economic science," Samuelson's Nobel citation read. "He has in fact simply rewritten considerable parts of economic theory."
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