Hirofumi Uzawa

Hirofumi Uzawa (1928 to 2014) was a Japanese economist who initiated mathematical economics in postwar Japan and formulated the growth theory of neoclassical economics. Born in Yonago, Tottori, he graduated in mathematics from the University of Tokyo in 1951 and turned to economics after reading John Ruskin. A paper on decentralized economic planning caught the eye of Kenneth Arrow, and Uzawa went to Stanford University in 1956, later teaching at Berkeley and the University of Chicago before becoming a professor in the Department of Economics at the University of Tokyo in 1969. His results include a 1962 proof that the existence of Walrasian equilibrium and Brouwer's fixed-point theorem are equivalent and a 1965 model in which technical change results from macroeconomic investment, an early approach to endogenous growth theory. The Uzawa-Lucas model and Uzawa's theorem carry his name. He served as president of the Econometric Society in 1976 and 1977 and was a senior fellow at the Research Center of Social Common Capital at Doshisha University.