Joseph Alois Schumpeter

There are certain great men remembered for something beyond the scope of their research, and Joseph Alois Schumpeter (1883-1950) is one of them. His life is rather a legendary than a narrative story.

Joseph Alois Schumpeter, an Austrian, was born in a place belonging no longer to Austria today. He showed a good talent in his school time and began smoothly his career by studying law at University of Vienna under the great Austrian capital theorist Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk. After PhD, he finally stepped into the domain where he later cultivated his own territory. He unfortunately experienced the collapse of the bank he led during the years after World War I. Then he retook his academic role in the University of Bonn until the arrival of shadow of Nazi. It was Harvard that accepted him where Schumpeter stayed until his death. In Harvard, he played a lively story of "Dead Poet Society". Joseph was so popular among the students and so hard among the colleagues that made his prestige and achievements in economics unnoticed. I almost forgot to tell that he has even been for a while the minister of Treasury of Austria even though it was not a successful try.

A well spread story of Schumpeter is that his student once had been refused by the librarian to borrow books freely and the student had turned to him. Schumpeter proposed then a duel against the librarian and won thanks to his training when he was young. Since after, his students could make themselves at home in the library.

However, Schumpeter was not so easy in his economist life since he was the most enemy, in the sense of theory discussion, of Keynesian economists. He thought low of Keynes' ideas that the government should intervene as the depression appeared. Schumpeter insisted The Theory of Economic Development that economy would adjust itself and without breaking down the old-fashioned, people could thus not enjoy a crystal new era! Many of his thinking was not recognized until the tide of IT in the 90's last century, especially by the entrepreneurs of silicon-valley.

By reviewing his most famous pieces, we could imagine in the turn of 19 and 20 century, a vigorous and learned young man flashed between the celebrity cafe salons and the classic music theaters, pursuing beautiful ladies. We should not affirm that it was his character inherent or the cultural influence of Vienna.
---"History of Economic Analysis"
---"The Theory of Economic Development"
---"Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy"
……

The author of those books was instead a dreamer of being the greatest rider of Austria, the greatest lover of Austria together with the greatest economist in the world.