ABSTRACT

THE great American who has departed from us was much more than an economist. But the vast realm over which he held sway and the intellectual climate of the epoch that nourished his thought have been admirably surveyed in Econometrica,1 and I shall confine myself to Fisher’s purely scientific work in our field. This will restrict our subject. But it will not lower it-at least, it could do so only through my own fault. For whatever else Fisher may have been-social philosopher, economic engineer, passionate crusader in many causes that he believed to be essential to the welfare of humanity, teacher,

inventor, businessman-I venture to predict that his name will stand in history principally as the name of this country’s greatest scientific economist.