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 More than any other economist, Paul Samuelson raised the level of mathematical analysis in the profession. Until the late thirties, when Samuelson started his stunning and steady stream of articles, economics was typically understood in terms of verbal explanations and diagrammatic models. He wrote his first published article, "A Note on the Measurement of Utility," as a twenty-one-year-old doctoral student at Harvard. In a 1938 article Samuelson introduced the concept of "revealed preference."
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 David Ricardo was one of those rare people who achieved tremendous success and lasting fame. After his family disinherited him for marrying outside his Jewish faith, Ricardo made a fortune as a stockbroker and a loan broker. When he died, his estate was worth over $100 million in today's dollars. At age twenty-seven, after reading Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations, Ricardo got excited about economics. He wrote his first economics article at age thirty-seven and then spent only fourteen years—his last ones—as a professional economist.
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Biographies 
