Friedrich Hayek

Friedrich August von Hayek was born in Vienna on 8 May 1899 and died on 23 March 1992. An Austrian economist and philosopher, he made his mark in political economy, political philosophy, and intellectual history. In 1974, he shared the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences with Gunnar Myrdal for their research on money and economic fluctuations, as well as how economic, social, and institutional phenomena are interconnected. His explanation of how prices transmit information is seen as a key reason he won the prize. Hayek was a prominent figure in the Austrian school of economics.

As a teenager, Hayek served in World War I, fighting in an artillery regiment on the Italian front, where he lost some hearing in his left ear and received a bravery decoration. He later said this experience, along with a wish to prevent the mistakes that caused the war, steered him toward economics. He earned doctorates in law (1921) and political studies (1923) from the University of Vienna. Over his career, he lived and worked in Austria, Great Britain, the United States, and Germany, becoming a British national in 1938. He studied and taught at the London School of Economics and later at the University of Chicago, eventually returning to Europe to teach at the Universities of Salzburg and Freiburg.

Hayek’s ideas shaped many political and economic movements in the 20th century and continue to influence thinkers across different viewpoints today. Though sometimes called a conservative, he rejected that label, preferring to be seen as a classical liberal or libertarian. His best-known book, *The Road to Serfdom* (1944), has been reprinted many times over the eight decades since it first appeared.

In 1984, he was made a Member of the Order of the Companions of Honour for his academic contributions to economics, and he also received the first Hanns Martin Schleyer Prize that year. In 1991, President George H. W. Bush awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In 2011, his article “The Use of Knowledge in Society” was named one of the top 20 articles published in the *American Economic Review* during its first century.

Hayek was born in Vienna to August von Hayek, a medical doctor and part-time botany lecturer, and Felicitas Hayek (née von Juraschek). The surname Hayek comes from the Czech Hájek and traces back to an ancestor named “Hagek” who moved from Prague in the 1500s. He had two younger brothers, Heinrich (1900–1969) and Erich (1904–1986). His father’s career as a university professor influenced Hayek’s own ambitions. Both his grandfathers were scholars: his maternal grandfather, Franz von Juraschek, was an economist in Austria-Hungary and a close friend of Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk, a founder of the Austrian School of Economics; his paternal grandfather, Gustav Edler von Hayek, taught natural sciences at a secondary school in Vienna and wrote on biological systematics.

On his mother’s side, Hayek was a second cousin of the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. His mother knew Wittgenstein well and often played with his sisters. Because of this family link, Hayek was among the first to read Wittgenstein’s *Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus* when it came out in German in 1921. Though they met only a few times, Hayek said Wittgenstein’s philosophy and methods deeply influenced his own thinking. In later years, he recalled a philosophical discussion with Wittgenstein when both were officers in World War I. After Wittgenstein’s death, Hayek planned to write his biography, collected family materials, and later helped other biographers. He was related to Wittgenstein on the non-Jewish side of the family. From his youth, Hayek often socialized with Jewish intellectuals, and people sometimes speculated about his own ancestry. Curious, he researched his family tree and found no Jewish ancestors within five generations.

As a child, Hayek was intellectually inclined and read widely before starting school, but he performed poorly in class due to lack of interest and conflicts with teachers. He ranked at the bottom in most subjects and once failed Latin, Greek, and mathematics. He was keen on theater, even trying to write tragedies, and on biology, often helping his father with botanical work. At his father’s suggestion, he read the genetic and evolutionary works of Hugo de Vries and August Weismann, as well as the philosophy of Ludwig Feuerbach, naming Goethe as his greatest early intellectual influence. In school, a teacher’s lectures on Aristotle’s ethics captivated him. In unpublished notes, he recalled feeling a divide between himself and his younger brothers, whom he saw as a different generation despite their small age gap; he preferred the company of adults.

Hayek’s academic path was driven by a desire to avoid the mistakes that led to World War I. He said the war itself was the decisive influence, drawing his attention to the problems of society and economics.