In 1930 Irving Fisher founded the Econometric Society where he served as the first president. He largely worked on his own and rarely supervised post graduate students.
He had set a target of writing one book a year which he failed to achieve. However, he was able to produce one book every two years of his working life.
Irving Fisher was a well know public figure during his time. He was also a director of company and a businessman. He had made a great fortune ($10 million) which was later wiped away by the Great Crash.
1932 – 1937 Fisher worked as an unpaid advisor of President Herbert Hoover and later Franklin Roosevelt.
Fisher got admission to Yale in 1884. He had lost his father to Tuberculosis in the previous year. You see unlike today; TB was a death sentence back then. He graduated in 1888 but he stayed on to pursue post graduate. He is rumored to have studied every social and natural science at Yale. He always wanted to read more and more.
1891 he registered for a doctorate degree in Mathematical economics. Nobel laureate Paul Samuelson praised his doctoral dissertation as “greatest doctoral dissertation in economics ever written’.
Upon completion of his PhD, he married Margaret Hazard on June 1893. They spent 14 months traveling as well as working around Europe. Fisher returned to Yale in 1894 to assume his duties as an assistant professor in the Department of Mathematics. He later transferred his services to a newly established Department of Economics.
In 1898 Irving Fisher became a full professor of economics which was a lifetime tenure from which he earned $3,000 p.a. which is equivalent to $85,000 today if inflation adjusted.
Fisher was a teetotaler, he did not smoke, drink coffee or tea. He woke up at 7 am and jogged around his neighborhood and took a light breakfast.
Later he was known across America as a health guru. He always promoted health living and regular medical checkups and even wrote successful books on the subject.
Irving Fisher was an active campaign and activist. He believed that economists should always serve the public.
He invested his time in many activities which generated him more earnings. Fisher had invested a lot on the stock market.
Fisher was a pioneer in the development of economic data. He established the Index Number Institute in 1923.
References
The Great Economists by Linda Yueh (2018)
