Curated playlist
Corresponding fellows of the British Academy
- Kenneth PomeranzWhy did industrialization happen in Europe and not in China? Historian Kenneth Pomeranz answered in a 2000 book.
- Noam ChomskyNoam Chomsky wrote his first article at age 10, about the fall of Barcelona.
- William JamesWilliam James argued we do not run from a bear because we are afraid. We are afraid because we run.
- Rudolf CarnapRudolf Carnap argued that most deep philosophical questions were meaningless.
- Esther DufloEsther Duflo was 46 when she became the youngest Nobel economics winner ever. She shared it in 2019.
- Wilbur Kitchener JordanWilbur Kitchener Jordan, who published as W. K. Jordan, lived from 1902 to 1980 and became one of the leading American historians of Britain in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. His career turned on a question that still feels…
- Claude Lévi-StraussClaude Lévi-Strauss died in 2009, and for four days the world did not know.
- Edmund HusserlA Franciscan priest smuggled approximately 40,000 pages of Edmund Husserl's notes out of Nazi Germany.
- Paul SamuelsonPaul Samuelson said he was born as an economist at age sixteen. It happened in a 1932 Chicago lecture on Malthus.
- Angus DeatonIn 2024, Nobel economist Angus Deaton said he had changed his mind on much of mainstream economics.
- Walter BurkertWhy did the Greeks kill animals at the altar? Scholar Walter Burkert spent his life on that question.
- Daniel KahnemanDaniel Kahneman won the 2002 economics Nobel without ever taking an economics course.
- Oliver Hart (economist)Economist Oliver Hart was called as a government expert witness in two tax cases.
- C. Vann WoodwardC. Vann Woodward argued that Jim Crow was chosen late, not inherited from Southern tradition.
- Hilary PutnamHilary Putnam invented a leading theory of the mind, then spent years taking it apart.
- Ronald CoaseRonald Coase faced twenty skeptical senior economists in 1960 and gradually won them over.
- Susan AtheyA summer job preparing computer sales bids set Susan Athey on the path to economics.
- Pieter GeylDutch historian Pieter Geyl lectured on Napoleon in 1940 and was taken hostage within weeks.
- Kurt GödelIn 1931, Kurt Gödel proved that any sufficiently powerful math system contains true statements it cannot prove.
- Michael RostovtzeffMichael Rostovtzeff saw one empire collapse in Russia, then wondered if Rome fell the same way.
- Eric FonerHistorian Eric Foner started college as a physics major. A Civil War seminar at Columbia changed his path.
- Joel MokyrEconomist Joel Mokyr won half of the 2025 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. He argues ideas drive growth.
- Erwin PanofskyIn 1934, Erwin Panofsky argued a famous Flemish painting was really a legal contract.
- George CœdèsGeorge Cœdès brought the forgotten empire of Srivijaya back into history in 1918.
- William BaumolEconomist William Baumol explained why string quartets keep getting pricier.