author
Irving Fisher
1867–1947
A pioneering American economist who helped shape modern thinking about money, interest rates, and financial crises. His writing combined mathematical precision with a gift for explaining big economic ideas in clear, memorable terms.
1 Audiobook
How to Live: Rules for Healthful Living Based on Modern Science
by Irving Fisher, Eugene Lyman Fisk
About the author
Born in Saugerties, New York, in 1867, Irving Fisher studied at Yale University and spent most of his career there as a professor. He became one of the earliest major American neoclassical economists and was especially known for bringing mathematical and statistical methods into economics.
Fisher made lasting contributions to capital theory, interest rates, and monetary economics. He is widely remembered for work connected to the quantity theory of money, price indexes, and what later became known as the Fisher equation. His debt-deflation theory, developed after the crash of 1929 and the Great Depression, remained influential long after his lifetime.
Beyond academic economics, he was also an inventor and a public campaigner on social issues and health. Some parts of his public advocacy, including his support for eugenics, are now seen as deeply troubling and are an important part of the historical record. He died in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1947.