Georgescu-Roegen, Nicholas

Georgescu-Roegen, Nicholas (1906–  ) economist; born in Constanza, Rumania. After earning a mathematics degree from the University of Bucharest and a doctorate in statistics from the University of Paris, he emigrated to the U.S.A. in 1947. He spent two years teaching at Harvard before accepting a professorship at Vanderbilt University where he remained until his retirement in 1976. His early achievements were based on highly technical mathematical economics, largely in utility theory and input-output analysis. He wrote on a number of other subjects including production theory, the nature of expectations, agrarian economies, and the Marxist prediction of capitalist breakdown. He later explored the area of growth modeling and attempted to formulate the principles of "bioeconomics," a new style of "dialectical" economic thinking to replace the "mechanical" mode. The ideas behind bioeconomics are best explored in his article, "Energy Analysis and Economic Evaluation" (Southern Economic Journal, April 1979).