Hurwicz, Leonid << HER wich, LAY oh nihd >> (1917-2008), was a Russian-born American economist who won the 2007 Nobel Prize in economic sciences. He was 90 years old when the award was announced, making him the oldest person ever to win a Nobel Prize. Hurwicz shared the award with the American economists Eric S. Maskin and Roger B. Myerson for work in mechanism design theory.
Mechanism design theory helps provide a framework for analyzing economic systems and institutions and for creating mechanisms that improve outcomes. It applies real-world conditions, including interactions among individuals and institutions involved in a market, to traditional economic theory. Among other things, it helps economists understand why markets work well in certain situations but not in others. Mechanism design theory also has political and social applications. For example, it has been used for labor negotiations and auctioning of government bonds.
Hurwicz was born in Moscow on Aug. 21, 1917, to Polish parents. His family returned to Poland after World War I (1914-1918). Hurwicz received a law degree from the University of Warsaw in 1938. He then studied at the London School of Economics before moving to the United States in 1940.
From 1944 to 1946, Hurwicz served as a research associate at the Cowles Commission, an economic research institution that was then at the University of Chicago. Hurwicz taught at several universities, but he spent most of his career at the University of Minnesota. He became a professor of economics there in 1951. Hurwicz died on June 24, 2008.
