Friedman as a Teacher

"I will not dwell here on what a remarkable colleague he was. I do, however, want to describe my first exposure to him as a teacher because he enormously changed my approach to economics and to life itself. After my first class with him a half-century ago, I recognized that I was fortunate to have an extraordinary economist as a teacher. During that class he asked a question, and I shot up my hand and was called on to provide an answer. I still remember what he said, “That is no answer, for you are only restating the question in other words.” I sat down humiliated, but I knew he was right. I decided on my way home after a very stimulating class that despite all the economics I had studied at Princeton, and the two economics articles I was in the process of publishing, I had to relearn economics from the ground up. I sat at Milton’s feet for the next six years—three as an assistant professor at the University of Chicago—learning economics from a fresh perspective. It was the most exciting intellectual period of my life."

-Gary Becker, The Economics of Liberty

See also the rest of the tributes.