Hirofumi Uzawa

Biography

Uzawa was born on July 21, 1928 in Yonago, Tottori to a farming family.
He attended the Tokyo First Middle School (currently the Hibiya High School ) and the First Higher School, Japan (now the University of Tokyo's College of Arts and Sciences faculty).
He graduated from the Mathematics Department of the University of Tokyo in 1951; he was a special research student from 1951 to 1953. At that time, he discovered the true nature of economics in the words of John Ruskin, “There is no wealth, but life.” which was quoted in the foreword to Tale of Poverty (貧乏物語 binbō monogatari) by Hajime Kawakami, and decided to study economics.
A paper on decentralized economic planning written by him caught the eye of Kenneth Arrow at the Stanford University, he went to study Economics at Stanford University in 1956 with Fulbright fellowship, and became a research assistant, then assistant professor  in 1956, then assistant professor at the University of California, Berkeley in 1960, and then associate professor at Stanford in 1961.  Meanwhile, in 1962, he received a Ph.D. from Tohoku University. He afterwards was professor at the University of Chicago in 1964, and later assumed the position of professor of the Department of Economics at the University of Tokyo in 1969. He also taught at Niigata University, Chuo University, and United Nations University. Joseph E. Stiglitz and George A. Akerlof did research under Uzawa at the University of Chicago and David Cass studied under Uzawa at Stanford University.
Uzawa was a senior fellow at the social, commonness, and capital research center of Doshisha University. He held the position of the president of the Econometric Society from 1976 to 1977. He also held the position of Counsel for the Development Bank of Japan's Research Institute of Capital Formation (RICF) from 1968 until his passing.

Contributions

Uzawa initiated the field of mathematical economics in postwar days and formulated the growth theory of neoclassical economics. This is reflected in the Uzawa–Lucas model, the Uzawa iteration, the Uzawa condition, and Uzawa's Theorem, among others.
In his 1962 paper, Uzawa proved that the two of Walrasian equilibrium and Brouwer's fixed-point theorem are equivalent.