And Jewish Scientist Wins Nobel Prize in Economics

Prof. Lawrence Klein of the University of Pennsylvania, well known in Israel for his lectures on economics and expertise in Israel’s economic affairs, has won the 1980 Nobel Prize in economics, the Swedish Academy announced in Stockholm today. Klein received the $212,000 award for creating “econometric models and their application to the analysis of economic fluctuations and economic policy,” the announcement said.

The economist, who is 60, has proved over the lost 30 years to be the leading researcher within the field of analysis of business fluctuations and created computer-based models determining the effects of government policies around the world, the Swedish Academy said. The announcement in Stockholm said that Klein’s most famous model was built in collaboration with another American colleague, Arthur Goldberger.

Klein’s wife, Sonia Adelson Klein, herself on economist with the Wharton Econometric Forecasting Associates in Philadelphia, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that she and her husband visited Israel “many times” and that in 1964 they spent three months there while he lectured at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He was the foreign member of the board of the Folk Institute in Jerusalem which concentrates on economic research and in that capacity he visited Israel once a year, she said.

Klein was born in Omaha, Neb and was graduated from the University of California at Berkeley in 1942. He has been at the University of Pennsylvania since 1958. His forebears come from Austria, Poland and Alsace-Lorraine in the 19th Century and settled in Nebraska and lows. Mrs. Klein is the daughter of the late Max Adelson who was president of the Touro Synagogue congregation in Newport, R.I. Prof. Klein’s parents are Leon and Blanche Monheit Klein who live in San Francisco.