Nobel Laureate from Polytech: Vasily Leontiev's Contribution to Economic Science
Vasily Vasilyevich Leontiev (1905–1999) was an economist, the creator of the theory of inter-industry analysis, and a lecturer at the M. I. Kalinin Leningrad Polytechnic Institute. He was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1973 «for the development of the input-output method and for its application to important economic problems.»
Vasily Leontiev was born in August 1905 into the family of an economics professor in Munich and grew up in Petrograd. In 1921, he entered the Faculty of Social Sciences at Petrograd Polytechnic Institute, graduating as an external student in 1923.
After completing his studies, he began working as a lecturer at the Department of Economic Geography at the M.I. Kalinin 1st Petrograd Polytechnic Institute. In 1925, he went abroad for medical treatment, where he continued his scientific work. He remained on the staff as a lecturer at the Leningrad M.I. Kalinin Polytechnic Institute until September 1926.
The personal file of V. V. Leontiev, a lecturer at the Leningrad M.I. Kalinin Polytechnic Institute, is kept in the Central State Archive of St. Petersburg (TsGA SPb), Fund R-3121, Inventory 12, File 384.
In 1931, the scholar settled in the United States, where he conducted economic research and taught at Harvard and New York Universities. He was the founder and director of the American Institute for Economic Analysis and a consultant to the United Nations.
Vasily Leontiev made extensive use of mathematical methods and soon developed new principles for the mathematical analysis of the economy, which established him as a renowned scientist. In 1954, he was elected president of the Econometric Society, and in 1970, president of the American Economic Association. In 1973, he was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for research he had originally conducted while still in the Soviet Union.
In 1988, the scholar was invited to the USSR as an expert to consult on matters related to perestroika. That same year, he was elected a foreign member of the USSR Academy of Sciences.
A number of economic phenomena are named in honor of Vasily Vasilyevich — for example, the Leontief model and the Leontief paradox. Due to these discoveries, the scholar came to be called the «apostle of planning.»
Vasily Leontiev was a recipient of honorary doctorates from the Universities of Brussels, Paris, and Leningrad. He was an officer of the French Legion of Honour (1968) and was awarded the Order of the Rising Sun (Japan, 1984) and the Order of Arts and Letters (France, 1985). He was also the recipient of the Bernard Harms Prize (1970).