Harry Markowitz

Harry Max Markowitz (August 24, 1927 – June 22, 2023) was an American economist, and a recipient of the 1989 John von Neumann Theory Prize and with Merton Miller and William Forsyth Sharpe the 1990 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences.

Quotes

• I was a colleague of Armen's, at the Rand Corporation "think tank," during the 1950s, and hold no economist in higher regard. When I sat down at my keyboard just now it was to find out what happened to Armen's works. One Google response was someone saying that Armen should get a Nobel Prize. I concur. My own Nobel Prize in Economics was awarded in 1990 along with the prize for Wm. Sharpe. I see in Wikipedia that Armen "influenced" Bill, and that Armen is still alive and is 96 years old.
  • On Armen Alchian[1]

• If I had to vote for what is the greatest piece of music ever conceived by the human mind, I'd have a hard time choosing between the Chaconne that ends Bach's second partita for unaccompanied violin or the his Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue for the piano.
  • On Bach [2]

• She talks about how Brahms baby sat them while her mother, Clara, was out earning a living, concertizing all over Europe. Brahms continued in their lives until his death. She also talks about her loving relationship with her mother; her usual sibling like relationships with the other Schumann children; and how she would get mad at Brahms when he would make her mother sad, even cry, but none of them could be mad at Brahms for very long.
  • On Eugene Schumann [3]

• A great man who wrote and spoke great speeches as the leader of a great cause: Great., Great. Great!,
  • On Winston Churchill [4]

Quotes about Markowitz

• A forthcoming book by Harry Markowitz, Techniques of Portfolio Selection, will treat the general problem of finding dominant sets and computing the corresponding opportunity locus, for sets of securities all of which involve risk. Markowitz's main interest is prescription of rules of rational behaviour for investors; the main concern of this paper is the implications for economic theory, mainly comparative statics, that can be derived from assuming that investors do in fact follow such rules.
  • James Tobin, "Liquidity preference as behavior towards risk." The review of economic studies (1958): 65-86.