Portrait of Ragnar Frisch

Birthday profile

Ragnar Frisch

Norwegian economist (1895–1973)

Born
March 3, 1895
Died
January 31, 1973
Zodiac sign
Pisces
Birth year
1895

About Ragnar Frisch

Ragnar Anton Kittil Frisch (3 March 1895 – 31 January 1973) was an influential Norwegian economist and econometrician known for being one of the major contributors to establishing economics as a quantitative and statistically informed science in the early 20th century. He coined the term econometrics in 1926 for utilising statistical methods to describe economic systems, as well as the terms microeconomics and macroeconomics in 1933, for describing individual and aggregate economic systems, respectively. He was the first to develop a statistically informed model of business cycles in 1933. Later work on the model, together with Jan Tinbergen, won the first Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1969. Frisch became dr.philos. with a thesis on mathematics and statistics at the University of Oslo in 1926. After his doctoral thesis, he spent five years researching in the United States at the University of Minnesota and Yale University. After teaching briefly at Yale from 1930–31, he was offered a full professorship in economics, which he declined after pressures by colleagues to return to the University of Oslo. After returning to Oslo, Frisch was first appointed by the King-in-Council as Professor of Economics and Statistics at the Faculty of Law, University of Oslo (then the Royal Frederick University) in 1931, before becoming leader of the newly founded Institute of Economics at the University of Oslo in 1932. He remained at the University of Oslo until his retirement in 1965. Frisch was one of the founders of the Econometric Society in 1930, and edited the journal Econometrica for its first 21 years. He has given name to the Frisch Medal, which is awarded every year by the Econometric Society for the best paper in econometrics published in the last five years, as well as the Frisch-centre for Applied Economic Analysis at the University of Oslo. The Grand Auditorium at the Institute of Economics, University of Oslo also bears his name.

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

Ragnar Frisch timeline

  1. Frisch became dr.philos. with a thesis on mathematics and statistics at the University of Oslo in 1926.
  2. Frisch was one of the founders of the Econometric Society in 1930, and edited the journal Econometrica for its first 21 years.
  3. Later work on the model, together with Jan Tinbergen, won the first Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1969.

The world when Ragnar Frisch was born

Ragnar Frisch was born in 1895. 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 1895

  • Top movieWorkers Leaving the Lumière Factory (first public film)

Headlines and milestones

  • Top headlineCuban War of Independence begins
  • Technology milestoneLumière brothers hold first public film screening
  • World population~1.55B

United States snapshot

  • U.S. leaderGrover Cleveland
  • U.S. population68.0M

1895 versus 2026

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

Measure18952026
Population68.0M341 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. 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.