Erlich, Alexander (1913–1985)

Abstract

Alexander Erlich was born in St Petersburg on 6 December 1913 and died on 7 January 1985. He moved to Poland with his family in 1918. In 1914, his father Henryk Erlich, a leader in the Socialist movement in Poland, was executed. In the same year, after university studies in Berlin and Warsaw, Erlich emigrated to the United States, where he earned a Ph.D. at the New School for Social Research and joined the faculty of Columbia University in 1955. From 1966 until his retirement in 1981 Erlich was professor of economics at Columbia, teaching in the economics department, the Russian Institute and the Institute for East Central Europe. Professor Erlich was revered by his students for his unstinting help and encouragement and respected by his colleagues for his breadth of knowledge and understanding of socialist economics.

This chapter was originally published in The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics, 2nd edition, 2008. Edited by Steven N. Durlauf and Lawrence E. Blume