1947: Economists representing the emerging Chicago School: Milton Friedman, George Stigler, and Aaron Director, at the first meeting of free-market intellectuals, the Mont Pèlerin Society. After another year in Chicago as a research assistant in the economics department, he was then hired by the National Resources Committee in Washington to work on a large consumer budget survey. Friedman was awarded a year’s fellowship to continue postgraduate studies at Columbia University. The two hoped to marry, but were long dissuaded by the financial difficulties of starting a family during the Depression. While earning a master’s degree in a single year at the university, he met a fellow economics student, Rose Director. Although scholarships covered his tuition costs, he worked throughout his student years to meet his living expenses.Īfter graduation, Friedman was interested in pursuing further studies in mathematics, but the dire state of the national economy inspired him to pursue economics instead, and he accepted a scholarship from the University of Chicago. He earned a degree in mathematics from Rutgers University, graduating in 1932 during the very depths of the Great Depression. He read voraciously, enjoyed school and showed a particular talent for mathematics. Although their financial position was precarious, and no member of the family had been to university before, it was decided early that Milton would attend college. When he was a year old, the family moved to Rahway, New Jersey, where Friedman’s parents kept a dry-goods store. Milton Friedman was born in New York City, the fourth child and only son of working-class Jewish immigrants from a Hungarian community in what is now Ukraine. In their book Two Lucky People Milton acknowledged Rose as having been a crucial partner in nearly all his economic and public policy work. Rose Director met Milton Friedman in 1932, when the two were seated next to each other in alphabetical order as graduate students at the University of Chicago.

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