Milton Friedman was an American economist and statistician who received the 1976 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his research on consumption analysis, monetary history and theory and the complexity of stabilization policy.

Friedman was one year old when his family moved from Brooklyn, New York, to Rahway, New Jersey, where he grew up. He won a scholarship to Rutgers University, studied mathematics and economics, and earned a bachelor’s degree there in 1932. While at Rutgers he encountered Arthur Burns, then a new assistant professor of economics, whom Friedman ultimately regarded as his mentor and most important influence. Burns introduced him to Alfred Marshall’s Principles of Economics, and Friedman later would approvingly quote Marshall’s description of economics as “an engine for the discovery of concrete truth.” Friedman always insisted that the study of economics was not merely a mathematical game and that it should enable one to understand how the real world works.

Friedman continued his economics studies at the University of Chicago (A.M., 1933) and Columbia University (Ph.D., 1946). While at Chicago he took Jacob Viner’s price theory course and met his future wife, Rose Director. In 1935 he moved to Washington, D.C., to assist with a consumer budget study for the Natural Resources Committee. Two years later Friedman took a job with the National Bureau of Economic Research in New York City so that he could join Simon Kuznets in studies of income and wealth distribution, in particular the distribution of professional incomes. His finding—that barriers to entry maintained by the American Medical Association helped to explain the much higher incomes of physicians relative to other comparable professional groups—was the source of some controversy when it was finally published. In the early years of World War II, Friedman worked at the Department of the Treasury in the Division of Tax Research and later for the Statistical Research Group at Columbia University, where he was a member of a team that applied statistical analysis to war research. He also taught for one year each at the Universities of Wisconsin and Minnesota. In 1946 he accepted a position in the economics department at the University of Chicago, which, except for occasional sabbaticals or visiting appointments, would be his academic home for the next 30 years. He became a full professor in 1948, was named the Paul Snowden Russell Distinguished Service Professor of Economics in 1962, and became an emeritus professor in 1983.

At Chicago Friedman taught courses in price theory and monetary economics, and in 1953 he established the Money and Banking Workshop—an important forum for faculty members, graduate students working on dissertations in the field, and occasional outside visitors. The workshop became renowned for the presentation and critical appraisal of papers in monetary economics.

In 1947 Friedman attended the opening meeting of the Mont Pèlerin Society, an organization founded by F.A. Hayek and dedicated to the study and preservation of free societies. Friedman would later say that his participation at the meeting “marked the beginning of my active involvement in the political process.” His multifold involvement included advising Presidents Richard M. Nixon and Ronald W. Reagan on economic policy, participating in various institutes and societies, and writing a regular column from 1966 to 1984 for Newsweek magazine, in which his articles would alternate with those presenting more liberal views on economic matters, by scholars such as Paul Samuelson and Lester Thurow. Friedman’s public policy positions included support of flexible exchange rates and a monetary growth rule, school vouchers, a balanced-budget amendment, and the decriminalization of recreational drugs (see also drug use); he opposed conscription and various forms of price controls—from the minimum wage to rent controls.