So I'll Just Introduce Him As…

An amusing anecdote from Fischer Black and the Revolutionary Idea of Finance by Perry Mehrling. For background, Paul Samuelson won the Nobel prize in Economics (okay, so it’s not really a true Nobel, but, whatever) in 1970 and is considered one of the founders of modern neoclassical economics. Robert Merton won the (psuedo?) Nobel prize in Economics in 1997 (along with Myron Scholes) for work in understanding stock options. At the time of this anecdote, Samuelson was a professor at MIT just a few years before he received in Nobel prize, and Merton was a young graduate student.

…in October 1968 Samuelson was slated to give the inaugural lecture for the new MIT-Harvard Joint Seminar in Mathematical Economics. It was to be a big event, held in a special room in Holyoke Center at harvard, and Samuelson’s name was the featured draw on all the publicity notices. All the big Harvard names would be there-Kenneth Arrow, Wassily Leontief, Zvi Griliches, Robert Dorfman, Hendrink Houthakker-and important faculty would be visiting from other areas universities as well. As a further mark of the event’s special status, no students would be allowed to attend-no sgudents, that is, except for Robert Merton, who Samuelson arranged to give the talk in his place, but without telling the organizers.
When the moment came, after the requisite ceremony and introduction, Samuelson stood up at one end of the long conference table and spoke. “This is a joint paper, and my co-author will present it. I’d like to introduce him as a professor, but he is not a professor. I’d like to introduce him as as Doctor, but he has no Ph.D. So I’ll just introduce him as Mr. Robert Merton.”