It is a common practice among scientists who win the Nobel prize for some intellectual achievement to deliver their Nobel Prize lectures on another intellectual achievement that is in more need of attention. Such was the case with Albert Einstein, who won the Nobel prize in physics in 1921 “for his services to Theoretical Physics and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect,” which celebrated his achievements in statistical and quantum mechanics, but who delivered a speech on the special theory of relativity, a controversial idea to many scientists at the time. Likewise, Friedrich August von Hayek has won the prize “for [his] pioneering work in the theory of money and economic fluctuations and for [his] penetrating analysis of the interdependence of economic, social, and institutional phenomena,” and has delivered his Nobel lecture on the abuse of reason in the social sciences. Hayek is one of the last century’s great polymaths, with major contributions to economics, political philosophy, ethics, legal studies, and epistemology. His intellectual heritage survives in the Austrian school of economics and is alive and well today with journals and schools producing current research and training younger researchers in economics and the social sciences. His work on macroeconomics and monetary theory with Ludwig von Mises in their newly founded (1927) Austrian Institute of Economic Research has resulted in Hayek’s Monetary Theory and the Trade Cycle (1929), and Prices and Production (1931).
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