Gary Becker Interview (page: 6 / 9) Nobel Prize in Economics	Print Interview

It sounds like your father had an independent spirit. In your field, you have struck out independently and made great innovations. Do you think there's a connection there between his spirit and yours?

Gary Becker: Well I'd like to think so.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. I had a great admiration for my father. I mean his independence. He had been set to go to Alaska, to open a business in Alaska, and his mother got ill and talked him out of doing it. Otherwise, that's how far he was willing to travel. He had a great independent spirit and channeled it into business activities. I like to believe that I follow him, and I channeled it into my own research activities. I certainly have been willing, like he was, to take chances on things that people thought would fail. I had more confidence and hopes that I would succeed. Yeah, so I trace a lot of it back to my father, and my mother, who, in her own way, was a free-thinker in a lot of ways.

Did she work too?

Gary Becker: No, my mother was full-time mother and housekeeper. She had four children. We had some help, but she did a lot of the work herself. Her free-thinking took another way. My father kept up with the news and read some. She didn't do that, but had more psychological insights into people. I always thought she had a lot of independent insight. It was a different insight. But I felt I got a lot from my mother as well as my father, and I thought both of them in their own ways were free-thinkers, although in other ways they were conventional. I think I followed them, in that in a lot of ways, I'm conventional. I'm not a rebel in dress or anything like that. But what free-thinking energies I have, I can channel into my work. I've fought a lot of my fights over my career, lost some, won some. But I think I've been willing to strike out on my own.

When were you first attracted to the field of economics? Was it something early on?

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Gary Becker: I originally was in mathematics and thought I would go into mathematics. I went to Princeton, planning to go into mathematics, but I had a strong interest -- I think inherited from the discussions we had in my family, with my father and my brothers and sisters -- to do some good for society, that was my orientation. And then by happenstance, I took an economics course in my freshman year. Part of the course dealt with the use of mathematics. They were using mathematics -- the textbook had -- using mathematics to discuss economic questions. And it struck me, "This seems ideal for me, given my mathematics, my interest in math. I can combine it now to learn about my social problems." That's when I made the shift, and so it was, in a sense, early on in my college career, which is earlier than most people get so excited about economics. But I did get excited then. I thought I can use this as a way of doing good, if you will, in understanding and helping society.

[ Key to Success ] Passion

When you were growing up, were there particular books that were important to you?

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Gary Becker: We had almost no books in our household. My older sister was a big reader, and she had some books. My father, he read more of the newspapers and listened to the radio, and when he got television, watched television. But very few books. I can't say in the household there were books. When I was a student, I began to read. And when I was about -- again I made a conversion -- up until about 14, 15, I was more athletically oriented, played on a bunch of teams around and was a good student, but had no interest in really intellectual activities. And then, I can't really know why, I had a conversion, began to give up the sports and get more involved in reading. And starting at 16, 17, I read a lot then, at nighttime, going to the library. But as I say, we had no books, but I'd go to the library a lot. Philosophy, whatever kids at that age were interested in, I began to read. And so then I did read a lot, but the books we had, I had to get out of the library and so on.

Do you remember any that stand out?

Gary Becker: I read some Aristotle and Plato. I remember I announced to my father when I was 17 or so, "Dad, I think I'm going to be a philosopher," and I remember his answer. My father was a bit blunt. He said, "Son, philosophers are born, they're not made." And he said, "You're not born to be a philosopher." That squelched me a little bit and I eventually shifted away from that. I read Progress and Poverty, about the single tax, by Henry George, who was famous in those days. It was written in the 19th century. That influenced a lot of us in economics. I didn't quite understand it, but it sort of dealt with a lot of issues. I read some literature of course. I had a great English teacher who introduced me to some of the great literature.

Do you remember the name of the teacher?

Gary Becker: Her name was Deborah Tannenbaum. She was a high school teacher I had.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. I can only remember two teachers who really had an influence on me in high school, a math teacher, Morgenstern, and Deborah Tannenbaum. And I wasn't a particular... I mean, I got good grades, but I wasn't a particularly good writer or anything. But she liked me, and she thought I was a good student and I really thought she was a great teacher who introduced us to literature, poetry. We read Keats and Wordsworth and a lot of the great poets. I consider her very important, even though in a sense I didn't go into anything that she taught me. But she had an influence on me, teaching me the great thrill of reading something great in literature, which I then applied also to other areas.

You said that there were talks in your family about social justice and politics. What was that like?

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Gary Becker: Well my father was kind of, sort of moderately on the left I would say. He was not a communist. I mean in those days communism was a big issue, whether you were a communist or not. It wasn't -- now that communism in the United States is a minor -- it was a significant issue, particular where we were growing up. My father was anti-communist but he was kind of a socialist. So we would discuss all the social -- and even though he was a businessman, he was still a businessman, but he was a socialist in his thinking. And we would discuss all the business, economic issues, social issues. My older sister was very smart, a very good thinker -- my older brother. So at the table and all, we'd have these lively discussions and that really started my interest. I have no doubt that's where it came from, the interest in my father and my brother and sister and a variety of -- I don't know how well informed our discussions were -- but they were lively and heated I would say. So I continued that, I think, in my career.

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