Through his "Economics" textbook, first published in 1948 and for years the most widely used college textbook on any topic, his analytical approach became the standard for undergraduate courses. Mr. Bernanke keeps a copy signed by Mr. Samuelson on the shelves in his office at the Fed.
"There's just an enormous amount of what every undergraduate learns that we take for granted that Paul played an absolutely critical role in codifying and uncovering," said MIT economist and National Bureau of Economic Research president James Poterba, who remembers carrying around Mr. Samuelson's textbook as a high school student. "It's like trying to envision how did people do mechanics before Newton."
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Mr. Samuelson hailed from a family of well-known economists, including brother Robert Summers, sister-in-law Anita Summers and nephew Lawrence Summers, who runs President Barack Obama's National Economic Council.
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