The Great Economists

Introduction

‘If I have seen a little further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.’

Sir Isaac Newton, British mathematician and physicist (1642–1727)

All intellectual disciplines require great thinkers, writers, experimenters and cogitators who seem single-handedly to advance knowledge and understanding within their particular subject area. Of course the process of intellectual development is often a collaborative process. This can mean a number of individually brilliant people working together on a significant project, such as James Watson, Francis Crick, Maurice Wilkins and Rosalind Franklin who discovered the double helix structure of DNA. It may also signify the process whereby thinkers in one era build on their predecessors, as ...