Uh, and Your Point Is?
by Joe?Pulcinella
Just happened upon this article called 7 Geniuses That Never Won the Nobel. Sounded mildly interesting so I decided to check it out but I just couldn't get past the first "genius" on the list.
Joan Robinson, Economics
Great Britain?s Joan Robinson may be one of the most exciting figures in the history of ?the Dismal Science.? An acolyte of the great John Maynard Keynes, her work covered a wide range of economic topics, from neoclassicism to Keynes?s general theory to Marxian theory. Not to mention, her notion of imperfect competition still shows up in every Econ 101 class. Add to that the fact that Robinson?s greatest work, The Accumulation of Capital, was published way back in 1956 but is still widely used as an economics textbook. So why no Nobel? Some say it?s because she?s a female, and no female has ever won the Nobel in Economics. Others say that Robinson?s work over her career was too eclectic, rather than hyperfocused like that of so many other laureates. Still others claim that she was undesirable as a laureate because of her vocal praise for the Chinese Cultural Revolution, a fairly anti-intellectual enterprise.