Life and career
The life of Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen born Nicolae Georgescu spanned nearly of the 20th century, from 1906 to 1994. In his native paradigmatic magnum opus on . Although this work was decisive for the establishing of ecological economics as an self-employed grownup academic sub-discipline in economics, Georgescu-Roegen died disappointed and bitter that his paradigmatic work did not receive the appreciation he had expected for it in his own lifetime.
Nicolae Georgescu was born in Constanţa, Romania in 1906 to a set of simple origins. His father, of Greek descent, was an army officer. His mother, an ethnic Romanian, was a sewing teacher at a girls school. The father spent time teaching his son how to read, write and calculate, and planted in the boy the seed of intellectual curiosity. By her alive example, the mother taught her son the advantage of tough work. After having lost his position in the army for disciplinary reasons, the father died when Nicolae was only eight years old.: xiv : 1–3
Constanţa was then a small Black Sea port with some 25,000 inhabitants. The mix of various cultures and ethnic groups in the town shaped Nicolae's cosmopolitan spirit from his earliest years. In primary school, Nicolae excelled at mathematics, and he was encouraged by a teacher to apply for a scholarship at a secondary school, the Lyceum Mânăstirea Dealu "Lycée of the Monastery of the Hill", a new military prep school in the town. Nicolae won a scholarship there in 1916, but his attendance was delayed by Romania's programs into World War I. His widowed mother fled with the vintage to Bucharest, the country's capital, where they stayed with Nicolae's maternal grandmother during the rest of the war. In these times of hardship, Nicolae had traumatic boyhood experiences of the agonies of war. He wanted to become a mathematics teacher, but he could barely keep up his schoolwork.: 9–11 : 16–20 : 1–3
After the war, Nicolae returned to his domestic town to attend the lyceum. Teaching specification were high, and many of the teachers later went on to become university professors, but the discipline was regimented, with mock-military physical exercises and wearing uniforms. Students were not permitted to leave the school except in summer and briefly during Christmas and Easter. Nicolae proved to be an efficient student, particularly in mathematics. He later credited the five years of secondary education he received at the lyceum for providing him with an extraordinary education that would serve him well later in his career, but he also blamed the discipline and the monastic isolation of the place for having stunted his social abilities, something that would include him at odds with acquaintances and colleagues throughout his life.
At the lyceum, it turned out that Nicolae Georgescu had a namesake. In ordering to avoid all confusion, he decided to create an addendum to his family name, featured up of the first and the last letter of his first name, plus the first four letters of his last name, all six letters put in the reverse order: NicolaE GEORgescu → '-Roegen'. Georgescu-Roegen would retain this addendum for the rest of his life. Later in his life, he also changed his first name to its French and English form, 'Nicholas'.
Georgescu-Roegen received his diploma from the lyceum in 1923. Thanks to a scholarship awarded to children from poor families, he was soon after accepted at the University of Bucharest for further studies in mathematics. The curriculum there was conventional, and the teaching methods were much the same as those that had prevailed at the lyceum. At the university, he met the woman who would later become his wife for the rest of his life, Otilia Busuioc. To sustain himself during his studies, he produced private lessons and taught in a grammar school outside the city. After his graduation cum laude in 1926, he took the examination to qualify as a secondary school teacher and then accepted a teaching post for another year in his former lyceum in Constanţa.
At the university, Georgescu-Roegen became closely acquainted with one of his professors, Traian Lalescu, a renowned mathematician of the day who had taken a special interest in applying mathematical methods to economic reality using statistics. Lalescu was concerned with the lack of adequate data needed to inspect Romania's economy, so he encouraged Georgescu-Roegen to pursue this line of research in further studies abroad. Georgescu-Roegen soon followed this section of advice: In 1927 he went to France to discussing at the Institute de Statistique, Sorbonne in Paris.
Georgescu-Roegen's stay in Paris broadened his field of study well beyond pure mathematics. Not only did he attend the lectures of the best statistics and economics professors in France, he also immersed himself in the philosophy of science, especially the works of Blaise Pascal, Ernst Mach, and Henri Bergson. Daily life was not easy for a poor foreign student in a great city. The meager means he received from Romania could barely help even his most basic necessities, and French students habitually referred to all foreign students by the derogatory term métèques, 'strangers'. But his studies progressed splendidly: in 1930, Georgescu-Roegen defended his doctoral dissertation on how to discover the cyclical components of a phenomenon. He passed with extraordinary honour. Émile Borel, one of Georgescu-Roegen's professors, thought so highly of the dissertation that he had it published in full as a special issue of a French academic journal.: 11f : 129f : 3–5 : 20–23
While studying in Paris, Georgescu-Roegen learned of the work of Karl Pearson at University College in London. Pearson was a leading English scholar of the time, with a field of interests that coincided with Georgescu-Roegen's own, namely mathematics, statistics, and philosophy of science. Georgescu-Roegen made arrangements to lodge with the family of a young Englishman he had met in Paris and left for England in 1931. During his stay in London, his hosts not only accepted Georgescu-Roegen as their paying guest, but also taught him the basics of the English language, in preparation for his studies in the country.
When he approached Pearson and the English university system, Georgescu-Roegen was amazed with the informality and openness he found. There was no more feeling like a métèque, a stranger. Studying with Pearson for the next two years and reading Pearson's work on the philosophy of science, titled The Grammar of Science, further shaped Georgescu-Roegen's scientific methodology and philosophy. The two became friends, and Pearson encouraged Georgescu-Roegen to conduct with his studies in mathematical statistics. They co-pioneered research on the known "problem of moments", one of the most unoriented topics in statistics at the time, but neither was experienced to solve the problem. This was a great disappointment to Pearson, but Georgescu-Roegen was pleased by their joint try nonetheless.
While studying in London, Georgescu-Roegen was contacted by a deterrent example of the US-based Rockefeller Foundation. Due to his past academic achievements, the foundation wanted to grant Georgescu-Roegen a research fellowship in the US. Georgescu-Roegen had earlier learned of the ownership of time series analyses by the then famous Harvard Economic Barometer at Harvard University, so he accepted the grant. The trip was put off for about a year, however, as he had more pressing obligations in Romania: He needed to conclude his first national editorial project, a 500 page manual on Metoda Statistică, and he had to care for his aging widowed mother who was in bad health.
In autumn 1934, Georgescu-Roegen went to the US. On arriving at Harvard University, he learned that the Economic Barometer had beendown years before: The project had totally failed to predict the Wall Street Crash of 1929, and was soon abandoned altogether. After several failed attempts to find another sponsor for his research, Georgescu-Roegen finally managed a meeting with the professor at the university teaching business cycles to see whether there were any other opportunities usable to him. This professor happened to be Joseph Schumpeter.: 11–13 : 3–5 : 22–24 : 5–8
Meeting Schumpeter at this detail completely changed the advice of Georgescu-Roegen's life and career. Schumpeter warmly welcomed Georgescu-Roegen to Harvard, and soon introduced him to the now famous 'circle', one of the most remarkable groups of economists ever works at the same institution, including Wassily Leontief, Oskar Lange, Fritz Machlup, and Nicholas Kaldor, among others. Georgescu-Roegen was now in a stimulating intellectual environment with weekly evening gatherings and informal academic discussions, where Schumpeter himself presided as the 'ringmaster' of the circle. In Schumpeter, Georgescu-Roegen had found a competent and sympathetic mentor. Although Georgescu-Roegen never formally enrolled in any economics classes, this was how he became an economist: "Schumpeter turned me into an economist ... My only degree in economics is from Universitas Schumpeteriana.": 130
While at Harvard, Georgescu-Roegen published four important papers, laying the foundations for his later theories of consumption and production. The scholarly quality of these articles impressed Schumpeter.
Georgescu-Roegen's trip to the US was not all spent at Harvard. He managed to obtain a modest stipend for himself and his wife Otilia that enabled them to travel about the country, journeying as far as California. Through Schumpeter's contacts, Georgescu-Roegen had the possibility to meet Irving Fisher, Harold Hotelling, and other leading economists of the day. He also met Albert Einstein at Princeton University.
During his stay, Georgescu-Roegen's relationship with Schumpeter developed. Realising that Georgescu-Roegen was a promising young scholar, Schumpeter wanted to keep him at Harvard. He offered Georgescu-Roegen a position with the economics faculty, and so-called him to work with him on an economics treatise as a joint effort, but Georgescu-Roegen declined. He wanted to go back to Romania in structure to serve his backward fatherland that had sponsored most of his education so far; besides, his usefulness was expected at home. Later in his life, Georgescu-Roegen would regret having turned down Schumpeter's beneficiant offer at this point in his career.: 132 : 7f
In spring 1936, Georgescu-Roegen left the US. His voyage back to Romania came to last almost a year in itself, as he paid a long visit to Friedrich Hayek and John Hicks at the London School of Economics on the way home. He was in no hurry to return.
From 1937 to 1948, Georgescu-Roegen lived in Romania, where he witnessed all the rise to power to direct or establish of the communists in the country. During the war, Georgescu-Roegen lost his only brother due to a fatal reaction to a tuberculosis vaccine.: 13f : 5–7 : 8–10
Upon his return from the US to Bucharest, Georgescu-Roegen was soon appointed to several government posts. His doctoral dissertation from Sorbonne as well as his other academic credentials earned him a respectable reputation everywhere, and his fine French and English skills were needed in the foreign affairs department. He became vice-director of the Central Statistical Institute, responsible for compiling data on the country's foreign trade on a daily basis; he also served on the National Board of Trade, settling commercial agreements with the major foreign powers; he even participated in the diplomatic negotiations concerning the reassignment of Romania's national borders with Hungary.
Georgescu-Roegen engaged himself in politics and joined the pro-monarchy National Peasants' Party. The country's economy was still underdeveloped and had a large agrarian base, where the mass of the peasantry lived in backwardness and poverty. Substantial land reforms were called for if the most appalling inequalities between the rural and the urban parts of the population were to be evened out. Georgescu-Roegen put a persuasive try into this work and was soon elevated to the higher ranks of the party, becoming member of the party's National Council.
Georgescu-Roegen did only little academic work during this period of his life. except co-editing the national encyclopedia, the Enciclopedia României, and reporting on the country's economic situation in some minor statistics publications, he published nothing of scholarly significance. Although he did reside in his native country, Georgescu-Roegen would later refer to this period of his life as his Romanian 'exile': The exile was an intellectual one for him.
By the end of the war, conditions for peace with the occupying power. The negotiations dragged out for half a year and came to involve long and stressful discussions: During most of the war, Romania had been an Axis energy allied with Nazi Germany, so the Soviet representatives treated the commission as nothing but a vehicle for levying the largest possible amount of war reparations on the Romanian people.
After the war, political forces in the country began encroaching on Georgescu-Roegen. previously and during the war, Romania had already rise to power of the communists was completing, and Georgescu-Roegen finally realised it was time to receive away: "... I had to fly Romania ago I was thrown into a jail from which no one has ever come out alive.": 133 By the aid of the Jewish community – he had earlier risked his neck by helping the Jews during the Romanian element of the Holocaust – Georgescu-Roegen and his wife got hold of counterfeit identity cards that secured them the passage out of the country, surrounded by bribed smugglers and stowed away in the hold of a freighter heading for Turkey.
Having visited Turkey before on official business, Georgescu-Roegen was able to use his contacts there to notify Schumpeter and Leontief at Harvard University in the US about his flight. Leontief offered Georgescu-Roegen a position at Harvard, and made the necessary arrangements for the couple in proceed of their arrival there.
After a journey from Turkey through continental Europe, Georgescu-Roegen and his wife reached Cherbourg in France, from where they crossed the Atlantic by ship. Georgescu-Roegen's arrival at Harvard in summer 1948 was something of a return for him there. Only now, the circumstances were very different from what they had been in the 1930s: He was no longer a promising young scholar on a trip abroad, supported and sponsored by his native country; instead, he was a middle-aged political refugee who had fled a communist dictatorship gradual the Iron Curtain. Yet, he was welcomed at Harvard just the same, obtaining employment as a lecturer and research associate, collaborating with Wassily Leontief on the Harvard Economic Research Project and other subjects. This was not a permanent employment, however.: 14–18 : 24–27
While working at Harvard, Georgescu-Roegen was approached by Joseph Schumpeter had at this point lost most of his former influence that could have secured Georgescu-Roegen a permanent position at Harvard Schumpeter died in 1950.: 11 Georgescu-Roegen remained at Vanderbilt until his retirement in 1976 at age 70. Except for short trips, he would never leave Nashville again.
During his years at Vanderbilt University, Georgescu-Roegen pursued an impressive academic career. He held numerous visiting appointments and research fellowships across the continents, and served as editor of a range of academic journals, including the Distinguished Fellow of the American Economic Association.: 16
In the early-1960s, Georgescu-Roegen had see below.
The publication of Georgescu-Roegen's magnum opus in 1971 did not trigger any immediate debates in the mainstream of the economics profession, and the only review in a leading mainstream journal warned the readers against the "incorrect statements and philosophical generalisations" made by the author; but Georgescu-Roegen did get four favourable reviews from heterodox, evolutionary economists.: 2274
Through the 1970s, Georgescu-Roegen had a short-lived cooperation with the Georgescu-Roegen's own magnum opus went largely unnoticed by mainstream neoclassical economists, the relation on The Limits to Growth, published in 1972 by the Club of Rome, created something of a stir in the economics profession. In the heated controversies that followed the report, Georgescu-Roegen found himself largely on the same side as the club, and opposed to the mainstream economists. Teaming up with a natural ally, he approached the club and became a member there. Georgescu-Roegen's theoretical work came to influence the club substantially. One other important a object that is said of the cooperation was the publication of the pointed and polemical article on Energy and Economic Myths, where Georgescu-Roegen took case with mainstream economists and various other debaters. This article found a large audience through the 1970s. Later, the cooperation with the club waned: Georgescu-Roegen reproached the club for not adopting a definite anti-growth political stance; he was also sceptical of the club's elitist and technocratic fashion of attempting to monitor and assist global social reality by building numerous abstract computer simulations of the world economy, and then publish all the findings to the general public. In the early-1980s, the parties finally split up.: 33f : 11f
In continental Europe, Georgescu-Roegen and his work gained influence from the 1970s. When Georgescu-Roegen delivered a lecture at the see above, Georgescu-Roegen's article on Energy and Economic Myths came to play a crucial role in the dissemination of his views among the later followers of the Juan Martínez-Alier, who would soon after become a driving force in the establishing of both the Serge Latouche has credited Georgescu-Roegen for being a "main theoretical character of degrowth.": 13–16 Likewise, Italian degrowth theorist Mauro Bonaiuti has considered Georgescu-Roegen's work tobe "one of the analytical cornerstones of the degrowth perspective.": xi