Tjalling Koopmans

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Tjalling C. Koopmans
Born August 28, 1910(1910-08-28)
's-Graveland
Died February 26, 1985 (aged 74)
New Haven
Residence U.S.
Nationality Dutch
Fields Economics
Institutions Cowles Commission
Yale University
Alma mater University of Leiden
Doctoral advisor Hendrik Anthony Kramers
Jan Tinbergen
Doctoral students Leonid Hurwicz
Known for Exogenous growth model
Econometrics
Economics of transportation
Notable awards Nobel Prize in Economics (1975)

Tjalling Charles Koopmans ('s-Graveland, August 28, 1910New Haven, February 26, 1985) was the joint winner, with Leonid Kantorovich, of the 1975 Nobel Prize in Economics.

Koopmans was born in 's-Graveland in the Netherlands. He began his university education at the University of Utrecht, aged 17, specialising in mathematics. Three years later, in 1930, he switched to theoretical physics. In 1933, he met Jan Tinbergen, the 1969 Bank of Sweden prize winner, and moved to Amsterdam to study mathematical economics under him. In addition to mathematical economics, Koopmans extended his explorations to econometrics and statistics.

Koopmans moved to the United States in 1940. There he worked for a while for a government body in Washington D.C., where he published on the economics of transportation focusing on optimal routing, then moved to Chicago where he joined a research body affiliated with the University of Chicago. In 1946, he became a naturalized citizen of the United States. In 1955, he moved to Yale University where he continued to publish, now on the economics of optimal growth and activity analysis.

Koopmans' early works on the Hartree-Fock theory are associated to the Koopmans' theorem, which is very well known in quantum chemistry. Koopmans was awarded his Prize (jointly with Leonid Kantorovich) for his contributions to the field of resource allocation, specifically the theory of optimal use of resources. The work for which the prize was awarded focused on activity analysis, the study of interactions between the inputs and outputs of production, and their relationship to economic efficiency and prices.

[edit] External links


Persondata
NAME Koopmans, Tjalling Charles
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION Dutch economist
DATE OF BIRTH August 28, 1910
PLACE OF BIRTH 's-Graveland
DATE OF DEATH February 26, 1985
PLACE OF DEATH New Haven