Lester Greenspan Telser (January 3, 1931 - September 3, 2022) was an American

economist An economist is a professional and practitioner in the social sciences, social science discipline of economics. The individual may also study, develop, and apply theories and concepts from economics and write about economic policy. Within this ...

and

Professor Emeritus ''Emeritus/Emerita'' () is an honorary title granted to someone who retirement, retires from a position of distinction, most commonly an academic faculty position, but is allowed to continue using the previous title, as in "professor emeritus". ...

in Economics at the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, or UChi) is a Private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Its main campus is in the Hyde Park, Chicago, Hyde Park neighborhood on Chicago's South Side, Chic ...

Education and career

He was a native of the Hyde Park neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago and a graduate of the Chicago Public Schools (Charles Kozminski elementary school and Hyde Park High School (now Hyde Park Academy High School)) and Roosevelt University, where he studied under Abba Lerner. He received his Ph.D. from the

in 1956, with Milton Friedman as his principal thesis supervisor. He taught briefly at Iowa State University and was conscripted into the

United States Army The United States Army (USA) is the primary Land warfare, land service branch of the United States Department of Defense. It is designated as the Army of the United States in the United States Constitution.Article II, section 2, clause 1 of th ...

in which he served from 1956 to 1958. He was a member of the University of Chicago faculty from 1958 (emeritus at the time of death).Faculty listing
, University of Chicago Economics Department, retrieved 2010-01-07. He was a visitor at the Cowles Foundation (which had formerly been at the University of Chicago) at

Yale University Yale University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701, Yale is the List of Colonial Colleges, third-oldest institution of higher education in the United Stat ...

in 1964–1965 and at the Center for Operations Research in Econometrics (CORE) at the Catholic University of Louvain (

Université catholique de Louvain UCLouvain (or Université catholique de Louvain , French for Catholic University of Louvain, officially in English the University of Louvain) is Belgium's largest French-speaking university and one of the oldest in Europe (originally establishe ...

) in Louvain (

Leuven Leuven (, , ), also called Louvain (, , ), is the capital and largest City status in Belgium, city of the Provinces of Belgium, province of Flemish Brabant in the Flemish Region of Belgium. It is located about east of Brussels. The municipalit ...

Belgium Belgium, officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a country in Northwestern Europe. Situated in a coastal lowland region known as the Low Countries, it is bordered by the Netherlands to the north, Germany to the east, Luxembourg to the southeas ...

) in 1969–1970.

Contributions

His works include research on the theory of the core,

Federal Reserve The Federal Reserve System (often shortened to the Federal Reserve, or simply the Fed) is the central banking system of the United States. It was created on December 23, 1913, with the enactment of the Federal Reserve Act, after a series of ...

policy, and integer programming. Unusually for the

Chicago school of economics The Chicago school of economics is a Neoclassical economics, neoclassical Schools of economic thought, school of economic thought associated with the work of the faculty at the University of Chicago, some of whom have constructed and populari ...

, he also wrote about

game theory Game theory is the study of mathematical models of strategic interactions. It has applications in many fields of social science, and is used extensively in economics, logic, systems science and computer science. Initially, game theory addressed ...

as early as 1972. A brief, personal history by Telser of the

Economics Department including the importance of the Cowles Foundation is available as part of a symposium on "Living the Legacy: Chicago Economics through the Years." The University of California-Berkeley also created an oral history of modern economics and included an interview with Lester Telser.

Awards and honors

In 1968 he became a

Fellow A fellow is a title and form of address for distinguished, learned, or skilled individuals in academia, medicine, research, and industry. The exact meaning of the term differs in each field. In learned society, learned or professional society, p ...

of the Econometric Society and of the American Statistical Association.

Books

* ''Functional Analysis in Mathematical Economics: Optimization Over Infinite Horizons'' (with Robert L. Graves, 1972). * ''Competition, Collusion, and Game Theory'' (1972). * ''Economic Theory and the Core'' (1978). * ''A Theory of Efficient Cooperation and Competition'' (1987). * ''Theories of Competition'' (1988). * ''Joint Ventures of Labor and Capital'' (1997). * ''Classic Futures: Lessons from the Past for the Electronic Age''. * ''The Core Theory in Economics: Problems and Solutions'' (2007).Routledge, 2007, ; Taylor and Francis, 2009, .

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Telser, Lester G. 1931 births 2022 deaths Educators from Chicago Economists from Illinois Fellows of the Econometric Society University of Chicago alumni University of Chicago faculty Fellows of the American Statistical Association Mathematicians from Illinois Hyde Park Academy High School alumni 20th-century American economists