In Memoriam: Nathan Rosenberg (1927-2015)

I have just received the sad news that Nathan Rosenberg has died. Nate was an outstanding economic historian, and in my early years in the profession I viewed him as the very model of the kind of economic historian I wanted to become. He reviewed many of my early papers before their publication, and when the publisher was looking for a reviewer of the manuscript that became my first book (published in 1971), I suggested Nate as the reviewer, and he did excellent work in advising me about revisions of my manuscript.

In later years I kept in touch with Nate, though less frequently as the years went by and our career paths diverged. When David J. Theroux and I were creating The Independent Review in 1995, I asked Nate to serve on the journal’s board of advisers, and he did so from then on. Nate had many lovely stories to tell in addition to the scholarly information he shared with so many of us. I recall his telling me once about how as a boy he delivered the Yiddish newspaper, Morgen Freiheit, in New Jersey.

James Poterba has written the following notice of Nate’s passing.

I write with the sad news that Nathan Rosenberg, a pioneer in the study of the economics of technological change who also served as Stanford University’s representative on the NBER Board of Directors from 1980 until 2010, passed away on Monday at the age of 87.

Nate received his undergraduate degree from Rutgers, and his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin. He began his academic career at Indiana University, and served as a faculty member at the University of Pennsylvania, Purdue, Harvard, and the University of Wisconsin before moving to Stanford in 1974. Nate was the Fairleigh S. Dickinson, Jr. Professor of Public Policy, Emeritus, at Stanford, and an NBER board member emeritus, at the time of his death.

Nate’s research was primarily concerned with the economics of innovation, and he drew on historical as well as contemporary evidence to illuminate the economic forces that influence the rate of technical progress. His work had a powerful impact on both the micro-economic and macro-economic understanding of the role of innovation in economic growth, as well as on the recognition of the impact of institutions and policy in shaping the innovation process. His contributions were widely celebrated. When the Society of the History of Technology awarded him the Leonardo da Vinci Medal, the citation described him as having ‘almost single-handedly changed the way economists and economic historians think about technology and the nature of economic change.

We have lost a great scholar and friend; he will be deeply missed.