Founder of Modern Economics: Paul A. Samuelson, Volume 1—Becoming Samuelson, 1915-1948. By Roger Backhouse. Oxford University Press; 760 pages; $34.95 and £22.99.

IN 1940, Paul Samuelson needed an academic position. As a graduate student and then a junior fellow at Harvard, he had achieved a strong publication record and impressed his professors. Joseph Schumpeter described him as “the most gifted graduate we have had these many years”. Nonetheless, eminent economists doubted he would be able to find a prestigious position because his work was too mathematical.

Samuelson joined the economics department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). At the time, the department’s purpose was to offer engineering students a little background in economics. The faculty published few articles, and the department did not even have a PhD programme.

While there, Samuelson revolutionised economics, bringing mathematical methods from the fringe to the centre of economic theory. He changed how economics was taught with a textbook that would be used by generations of students. And he attracted talented academics and students to the MIT economics department, helping to turn it into the powerhouse it is today.

The first volume of Roger Backhouse’s biography describes Samuelson’s life up to 1948, the year he published “Economics: An Introductory Analysis”. Mr Backhouse describes Samuelson’s undergraduate education at Chicago, his time as a graduate student and junior fellow, his wartime work for the government and his early years at MIT. Samuelson’s later life, including his receipt of the Nobel prize in 1970, will be covered in a second volume.

When Samuelson started out, debates over economic theory were predominantly verbal rather than mathematical; in 1940 70% of articles on economic theory in the American Economic Review did not include any maths. Consequently, different schools of economic thought flourished, each with its own complex ideas.

Samuelson realised that the use of complicated mathematics could clarify ideas and unify different fields under a common framework. His approach culminated in the idea that people try to optimise their well-being, which he then used to think about overall welfare. This insight allowed him to describe theories mathematically and to work out their implications by solving equations. Samuelson was able to apply this method of analysis to several different fields, including consumer preference theory, the economics of trade and labour economics.

The Great Depression was in full swing when Samuelson began his studies. He understood the challenge that high unemployment presented to the free-market theories he had learned at Chicago. He adopted Keynesian ideas, arguing that to ensure full employment governments should spend to make up for shortfalls in private demand and investment. And he came to believe that governments have a role to play in improving social welfare.

His textbook for undergraduate economics students included Keynesian ideas. As a result, he attracted criticism from industrialist donors to MIT. That did not prevent his book from succeeding, and it remained the standard economics textbook for undergraduates until the 1990s. Ironically, even though it was written by a strong proponent of mathematics in economics, it is not maths-heavy. Perhaps drawing on his experience of explaining economic concepts to government officials during the war, Samuelson made the book accessible. It was written in a colloquial style, with practical examples and even fictional stories that demonstrated the impact that economic policy has on people’s lives. Samuelson intended the book to be read by students who were not specialising in economics.

Mr Backhouse looks at Samuelson’s personality as well as his ideas. He reveals a man who was publicly modest but privately boastful. Samuelson played down the originality of some of his work (he referred to the Stolper-Samuelson theorem as just an extension of the work of Eli Hecksher and Bertil Ohlin) as well as his contributions to collaborations with other economists. In his undergraduate diary, however, he compared his independent confirmation of old theorems to the discovery of calculus .

As well as Schumpeter at Harvard, Samuelson’s teachers included Frank Knight at Chicago. Mr Backhouse provides an overview of the lives and ideas of these men and other distinguished people who influenced Samuelson. The obsessive speculation on which classes Samuelson may have attended as a student and which papers he may have read do not add to the book, however.

A common thread throughout Samuelson’s life was the desire to bring clarity to economics. He understood that mathematics could help resolve debates that had been obscured by too much jargon. He also knew that plain, interesting writing was necessary to explain economics to the public. Today, when difficult maths can obscure economics for the uninitiated, economists would do well to keep the latter point in mind.