Nobel to monetarist

Press, 16 October 1976, Page 8

Nobel to monetarist

NZPA-Reuter Detroit Milton Friedman, of Chicago University, who for much of his life has stood out against mainstream trends in economic thought, has reacted with pleasure but little surprise on learning he had won the 1976 Nobel Prize for economics. Professor Friedman won the award for his writings in consumption analysis, monetary theory and history, and the influence of his theories on the monetary policies of central banks.

“I knew I was under consideration for a number of years,” he told a press conference in Detroit.

Noting that the prize, which carried a record cash value of sAustl 12,200, brought him pleasure, the free enterprise advocate added: “The funds available for the prize have been well invested (by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences) and they have kept up with inflation, so they are true dollars.”

The prize for medicine was jointly awarded to two Americans for their discoveries concerning new mechanisms for the origin and dissemination of infectious diseases.

Dr Baruch Blumberg, aged 51, works at the Institute for Cancer Research at Philadelphia, and Dr Carleton Gajdusek, aged 53, is associated with the laboratory of Central nervous system studies at the National Institute of Health at Bethesda, Maryland. In the past three years, Dr Blumberg has won the Epnger Prize of the University of Freiburg, West Germany, the Passano Award, and the Modern Medicine Distinguished Achievement Award for his discovery of a means of indicating the presence of hepatitis B virus in the blood, which causes an infection of the liver. For this same research he has been named a Nobel laureate.