Weitzman received a B.A. in Mathematics and Physics from Swarthmore College in 1963. He went on to receive an M.S. in Statistics and Operations Research from Stanford University in 1964, and then attended Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he received a Ph.D. in Economics in 1967. Weitzman first joined the Yale University faculty, in 1967, moved to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, before joining the economics department at Harvard University in 1989, where he taught until his death in 2019.[1] Weitzman died by suicide on August 27, 2019 at the age of 77.[2][3][4]