Irving Fisher, the First Celebrity Finance Professor When
speculative bubbles form, as they did in the 1920s and the late
1990s, the financial community invariably listens to academic
entrepreneurs peddling their pet philosophies about the
financial boom. Fisher was born Feb. 27, 1867, in Saugerties,
New York. Throughout his footloose youth, he thrived at public
and private schools that demanded mathematical rigor.
Eventually, he entered Yale University as a science major. He
ended up in a new area of study called economics. He received
his doctorate with one of Yale’s first economics dissertations,
and remained associated with the university for the rest of his
life. Fisher was obviously brilliant, though health problems
stemming from a bout of tuberculosis early in his career forced
him to postpone his plans. This mishap also gave him a taste of
his own vulnerability and a lifelong concern for health and
eugenics, the now-discredited study of methods designed to
improve the genetics of the population. Once