Portrait of Milton Friedman

Birthday profile

Milton Friedman

Milton Friedman, American economist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (died 2006)

Born
July 31, 1912
Died
November 16, 2006
Zodiac sign
Leo
Birth year
1912

About Milton Friedman

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. With George Stigler, Friedman was among the intellectual leaders of the Chicago school of economics, a neoclassical school of economic thought associated with the faculty at the University of Chicago that rejected Keynesianism in favor of monetarism before shifting their focus to new classical macroeconomics in the mid-1970s. Several students, young professors and academics who were recruited or mentored by Friedman at Chicago went on to become leading economists, including Nobel laureates Gary Becker (1992), Robert Fogel (1993), and Robert Lucas Jr. (1995). Friedman was awarded a competitive scholarship to Rutgers University and graduated in 1932. Ideas from this project later became a part of his Theory of the Consumption Function, a book which first described consumption smoothing and the permanent income hypothesis.

Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.

Milton Friedman timeline

  1. Friedman was awarded a competitive scholarship to Rutgers University and graduated in 1932.
  2. Several students, young professors and academics who were recruited or mentored by Friedman at Chicago went on to become leading economists, including Nobel laureates Gary Becker (1992), Robert Fogel (1993), and Robert Lucas Jr. (1995).

The world when Milton Friedman was born

Milton Friedman was born in 1912. The year snapshot below places that birthday in its cultural and historical setting: the music and films people were following, the headlines shaping public life, and the everyday prices families encountered.

Culture in 1912

  • Best-selling book"The Harvester" – Gene Stratton-Porter

Headlines and milestones

  • Major sports momentJim Thorpe wins two gold medals at the Stockholm Olympics
  • Top headlineRMS Titanic sinks on maiden voyage — 1,500+ die
  • Technology milestoneFirst parachute jump from an airplane
  • World population~1.72B

United States snapshot

  • U.S. leaderWilliam Howard Taft
  • U.S. population94.6M

1912 versus 2026

These figures put everyday life in Milton Friedman's birth year beside the site's latest United States snapshot.

Measure19122026
Population94.6M341 million

Sources and editorial standards

This profile combines a biographical source with structured birthday and historical context. Sources recorded for this profile: Wikipedia, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Library of Congress, Wikidata. See our editorial policy for sourcing, corrections, and review standards.

Read the source biography on Wikipedia. Wikipedia text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.