Alexander Gerschenkron

"Gerschenkron was an economic historian and a comparativist, writing on the European past and the Soviet present. He taught from 1948 to 1975 in the department of economics at Harvard, producing, if that is quite the word, scores of graduate students and writing a moderate number of books. He made an impression. Students and colleagues lived in awe of him, and not only because they were merely economists while he was everything, a polymath ranging over statistics and Greek poetry and a great deal in between. Other people who know everything - the Bernard Lewises and the Albert Hirschmans of the scholarly world - tell stories about Gerschenkrons erudition and wit as though even they, too, were impressed."

- Donald McCloskey