ABSTRACT
Born in 1916, Simon spent his early years with his parents and his older brother on the west side of Milwaukee in a middle-class neighbourhood. As a boy, he was rather shy, preferring to spend most time reading by himself; and he often walked to a park as early as 5 a.m. to climb into a tree and read before breakfast. Attending public schools, Simon at first intended to study biology. However, after he went on a strawberry hunting trip and discovered that he was colour-blind (unable to distinguish the strawberries from the plants), he changed his mind, thinking that colourblindness would be too big a handicap in biology. He then thought briefly about studying physics, but he gave up that idea after discovering that there weren’t really any major advances left to be made in physics: ‘They have all these great laws’, he said in conversation. ‘Newton had done it, no use messing around with it.’ As a result, upon finishing high school in 1933, Simon enrolled instead at the University of Chicago with an interest in making social science more mathematical, and an intention to major in economics. In keeping with his strong wish to be independent, Simon preferred reading on his own instead of taking classes; and he particularly refused to take the class in accounting, which was required to graduate in economics.7 As a result, he majored instead in political science.
