Tjalling Koopmans

Tjalling C. Koopmans
File:Tjalling Koopmans.jpg
Born	(1910-08-28)August 28, 1910 's-Graveland, Netherlands
Died	February 26, 1985(1985-02-26) (aged 74) New Haven, Connecticut, USA
Nationality	Netherlands
Alma mater	University of Leiden
Known for	Exogenous growth model Econometrics Economics of transportation
Awards	Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences (1975)
Scientific career
Fields	Economics
Doctoral advisor	Hendrik Anthony Kramers Jan Tinbergen
Doctoral students	Leonid Hurwicz

Tjalling Charles Koopmans (August 28, 1910 – February 26, 1985) was the joint winner, with Leonid Kantorovich, of the 1975 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences.

Koopmans was born in 's-Graveland, North Holland. He began his university education at the University of Utrecht at seventeen, 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 Cowles Commission for Research in Economics 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 Nobel 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.

Further reading

• Koopmans, Tjalling C., "Concepts of optimality and their uses", Nobel Memorial Lecture, December 11, 1975

External links

• Nobel autobiography
• Scarf, Herbert E., "Tjalling Charles Koopmans: August 28, 1910 — February 26, 1985", National Academy of Science
• IDEAS/RePEc