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Even though he was training in physics, Koopmans was developing an interest in economics, particularly mathematical economics. His doctoral dissertation was not in physics but a topic in mathematical statistics which was applicable to the newly born field of econometrics. After graduation he lectured for about two years at the School of Economics in Rotterdam, and then he worked on business cycle modeling for the League of Nations in Geneva. Afterwards World War II began and in 1940 the Koopmans family moved to the United States. He worked as a research associate at Princeton University and as special lecturer at New York University before serving as a statistician for the British Merchant Shipping Mission in Washington. Was then when Koopmans began work on methods for the selection of shipping routes that would minimize the total cost of transporting required quantities of goods, available at various locations in America, to specified destinations in England. He showed that the desired result is obtainable by the straightforward solution of a system of equations involving the costs of the materials at their sources and the costs of shipping them by alternative routes. He also devised a general mathematical model of the problem that led to the necessary equations. This is called the transportation problem, a special case of what subsequently became known as linear programming. In 1944 Koopmans joined the Cowles Commission for Research in Economics at the University of Chicago. In 1947 after several meeting with George B. Dantzig who was researching in linear programming he wrote a paper called "Optimum Utilization of the Transportation System" which was one of the foundations of the Transportation Model. When the commission was relocated to Yale University in 1955, he moved with it, becoming professor of economics at Yale. Koopmans remained with Yale and the Cowles Foundation the rest of his academic career, serving for a period as the director of the Cowles Foundation. He wrote a widely read book on the methodology of economic analysis, "Three Essays on the State of Economic Science" (1957). They are a classical theoretical and methodological exposition of Neo-Walrasian general equilibrium theory (for a brief explanation of this theory, visit The History Of Economic Thought Website) Dr. Koopmans was internationally known for his work in economic theory and mathematics and shared the Nobel Prize in 1975 with Leonid V. Kantrovich of the Soviet Union. Major Works of Tjalling C. Koopmans
Resources on the author:Autobiography of Tjalling C. Koopmans at Nobel site. Press release of Nobel award (1975). The History Of Economic Thought WebsiteThe History Of Economic Thought Website. San José State University Economics Department. "Tjalling Charles Koopmans, 1910-1985 Biographical Memoir," by Herbert E. Scarf, 1995. 1985 Obituary by New York Times. 1985 Obituary by Boston Globe. |
Dr.
Tjalling C. Koopmans was born in The Netherlands on Aug. 28, 1910, and died in
April 28, 1985 in the New Haven, USA. He studied mathematics at the University of Utrecht,
but he decided to become a thoretical physicist and completed a master's degree
in physics at the University of Utrecht in 1933. He entered a doctoral program
in physics at the
University of Leiden where he received his 
