Homer Jones: A Personal Reminiscence
By Friedman, Milton | |
Proquest LLC |
When I first met
I met Homer when I was a junior at
In statistics, Homer was clearly learning along with us, and that experience has always persuaded me that the blind can in fact lead the blind-or is the right aphorism that in the country of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. Because he was just learning, Homer could recognize the points of difficulty. Because he was so mature despite his chronological youth, he had neither false pride nor false modesty. He did not try to hide his limited knowledge of mathematics and statistics, but neither was there any question, on his part or ours, that he was the teacher and we the students.
The pattern of that course has characterized Homer ever since, with far less objective justification. Homers shrewd questions and critical evaluations belie the profession of ignorance and puzzlement. But the tactic is extremely effective in leading others to examine more carefully their premises, improve their argument, and understand more deeply their conclusions.
Chronological maturity, which can bring wisdom and self-confidence and, less often, modesty, also often brings a dulling of the inquisitive sense, of the feeling of wonder, of the openness to new ideas that is the pearl of youth. It is in this sense that Homer has never matured. Today, as when I first met him, Homers great forte is asking interesting and probing questions, not accepting superficial answers, and retaining the attitude that we all have a great deal to learn. He combines with this a great belief in the persuasive power of hard facts and an unusual patience in pressing his views.
Homers inquisitiveness, his hunger for information and understanding, rested, even when I first knew him, on a bedrock of strong values and firmly held principles. He first introduced me to what was even then known as the
The paradox is perhaps brought out best by an episode in which Homer was not involved. One evening in the early 1950s, a group of us were discussing various economic issues at Frank Knights house, with much of the discussion consisting of
Homer, along with
From Rutgers, Homer returned to graduate work at
My own contacts with Homer were rather limited during this decade or the succeeding decade when he was at the
Throughout this period most of Homers friends, and certainly my wife and I, believed that his talents were being grossly underutilized-and that remains my opinion today. But finally in 1958 when by some strange chance he was called-and that is the proper word in this context- to the Federal Reserve Bank of
Homer was in his element as Director of Research and then Senior Vice President of the
Between them,
Homer s influence is not to be looked for primarily or even largely in publications over his name. His influence is manifest rather in the whole output of the Federal Reserve Bank of
This article first appeared in the
At the time this article was written, the late
This article has been reformatted since its original publication: Friedman, Mi lton."Flomer Jones: A Personal Reminiscence."
Copyright © 1976, Elsevier. Used with permission. The views expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the
Copyright: | (c) 2013 Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis |
Wordcount: | 1823 |
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