Renowned social scientist and economist Albert O. Hirschman died on Dec. 10 at the age of 97. A firm friend of the Inter-American Foundation, he spent 14 weeks in 1983 visiting IAF-funded projects in the Argentina, Colombia, Chile, Dominican Republic, Peru and Uruguay. His book memorializing the experience,
Getting Ahead Collectively, describes the energy of grassroots groups and how it can “mutate” to address new challenges.
Born in Berlin, Hirschman left in 1934 to study in France and then in London. His studies were interrupted when he volunteered to fight with the Republicans in Spain. He eventually received his doctorate in economics in 1938 from la Universitá di Trieste. A year later he enlisted in the French army. After the surrender, he and the American journalist Varian Fry evacuated some 2,000 refugees from Vichy France. Forced to flee to the United Sates, he then served with the Office of Strategic Services in North Africa, Italy and Germany.
Hirschman’s life was a uninterrupted dedication to the disadvantaged. He worked for the Federal Reserve on the reconstruction of Europe through the Marshal Plan. As an economic advisor to the Colombian government, he examined poverty, its root causes and alternatives. His seminal work
Exit, Voice and Loyalty, published in 1970, established him as an authority on underdevelopment. After teaching at Harvard, Yale and Columbia, he became a tenured professor at Princeton where he taught from 1974 and where he remained a fixture until his death.