Abba P. Lerner
American economist (1903-1982)
Abraham "Abba" Ptachya Lerner (also Abba Psachia Lerner; 28 October 1903 – 27 October 1982) was a Russian-born American-British economist.
Biography
Born in Novoselytsia, Bukovina, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire Lerner grew up in an Ashkenazi Jewish family, which emigrated to Great Britain when Lerner was three years old. Lerner grew up in London's East End and from age 16 worked as a machinist, a teacher in Hebrew schools, and as an entrepreneur. In 1929, Lerner entered the London School of Economics, where he studied under Friedrich Hayek. A six-month stay at Cambridge in 1934–1935 brought him into contact with John Maynard Keynes. In 1937, Lerner emigrated to the United States. While in the US, he befriended intellectual opponents Milton Friedman and Barry Goldwater.
Lerner never stayed at one institution long, serving on the faculties of nearly a dozen universities and accepting over 20 visiting appointments. Lerner was 62 when he was given a professorship at the University of California, Berkeley in 1965 and left after reaching mandatory retirement age six years later. During his time there, Lerner criticized the unrest caused by the student protests as a threat to academic freedom.
“Abba P. Lerner” enters the record as american economist (1903-1982). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Abba, Lerner and American can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 3, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q305781. VIAF identifies the subject as 108985451. The Library of Congress control number is n79104246. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1903, 1982, 1929 and 1934.
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This entry incorporates text from “Abba P. Lerner” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.