Steve Dowrick

Here is a link to the obituary that Bruce Chapman and Maria Racionero wrote. All I can add is that I interacted a bit with Steve after I started working for the Environmental Economics Research Hub at Arndt Corden Department of Economics in 2009. I found him to be a very friendly and helpful person. Steve came in to chat a few times when he happened to be visiting over at Arndt Corden and took an interest in my work and also gave me some very nice comments on my draft proposal for the ARC (my first) - he said that if it was up to him he would fund it - this made me feel much more confident! I certainly saw him as a role model.

I knew he had been ill and then heard recently that he had died. It was very sad news, especially as he was only 60 years old.

Angus Maddison Dies

Just heard that Angus Maddison died. The Economist has an obituary. I visited Gronigen a few years ago but didn't get to meet him. Just a few days ago I was checking his data on historical GDP. The work of my colleagues such as Astrid Kander and Paul Warde follows in this tradition in reconstructing the energy history of Europe.

Paul Samuelson

The big news today in economics is the death of Paul Samuelson. I don't have much to add to what is being said except that I am one of those first introduced to the topic via his textbook. We used it as the English textbook in the "Introductory Economics" course I took in my first year at Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1985-6. There was also a very terse textbook in Hebrew titled "Mavo Lekalkalah" (Introduction to Economics) produced by the student union based on past lectures. After all my moves, I no longer have Samuelson's Economics. I really have very few books compared to most academics.