Eulogy for Professory Murray C. Kemp
I am greatly saddened to learn of the passing of Murray C. Kemp, Emeritus Professor of University of New South Wales (UNSW Sydney).
Murray, along with Samuelson and Solow, exerted a guiding influence on my life and career for the last 62 years, shaping me about how to be a research economist as well as inspiring me with ideas, professionally and personally. I first met Murray when he (on his way from McGill to UNSW Sydney) agreed to teach at MIT for two years at the invitation of Domar. At that time, I was a doctoral student with Samuelson as my thesis advisor. At MIT, Murray and Samuelson found each other on the gains from trade domain, and the topic looks forever different from before. Murray also kindly took over the trade course from Kindelberger (then on leave) whom in his text, calculus came mostly in Vanek's Appendix, to explain, say, the Stolper-Samuelson theorem which Samuelson taught at some college nearby.
Looking back, Samuelson remade heaven and earth of the Marshallian trade theory with his first six articles on trade, and Murray's MIT lecture notes (the core of his 1964 text) fixed the sun and moon in it, capturing exo-planets like 'vintage goods' variations floating around. It is my lasting honor that Murray adopted my thesis on 'trade war' as a chapter in his 1964 text, with the implications of a Sino-US trade war on Japan (in my mind, at the eve of Chairman Mao's redirection of attention inward to the Cultural Revolution).
On my 1961 return to Taiwan, then fiscally severely-famished on research materials (as journal series must compete against imported soybeans for US aid, causing years-long delays), I begged my gifted and understanding assistants that, to the best of their abilities, to lecture as I was lectured at MIT. Next then, a kind Murray moved heaven and earth, to 'tele-transport' me to Kensington in order to satisfy the Ricardian principle of comparative advantage. Personally, I enjoyed the opportunity tremendously as he invited me to his department to share the stimulating, congenial and civilized atmosphere there. When he was away to ANU for a term, I greatly missed the deeply, thoughtful interchanges with my colleagues.
Everyone knowing Murray would realize he was modest, but very rigorous in detail, and he would not do anything just to please. He read voluminously in economic history and history of economic thought. He was also a firm believer in the division of labour, and the principle of comparative advantage. Much as he was very organized and meticulous on details, he believed given the global professional affinity on rigorous reasoning, for his country, he had to fight his ‘corner’ and do less on administrative chores. Agree with him or not, let us all recognize, he did his very best as he knew how, even as he had to care personally for Thérèse, his wife, for long years.
It is my regret that, due to my carelessness, some mistakes were made on the validity of some of our earlier results, and Dixit kindly organized a graduate class at Princeton to locate and publish it (as a participant at Princeton informed me later). So, to honor the spirit of research, under Murray's leadership, we find a constructive resolution, settling all that can be settled by deductive logic, into what is in print, The Welfare Economics of Trade, and we would try all we could to delimit what we first defined a model, known now as the 'Kemp-Wan Propositions' to what we originally formulated. For anyone to apply the spirit of our initially formulated research, and developed a new, may be better model on its own, surely, refer them as a new theory, we would both applauded. But respectfully, we had to point out, what is not, to our abilities, we knew as derivable under our initial logic. The time and effort of future researchers cannot be wasted in perplexity.
It is also time for me in my humble responsibility to offer some of my personal, outdated and likely oversimplified observations. It would be much better, for the wonderful local Australian economic talents and intellectuals, that more analytical undergraduate courses were offered to prepare them for Murray’s graduate teaching and research guidance, rather than allowing the rare benefits of his supervision going mostly to cultivate younger foreign economists. Of course, Murray’s nurturing of his students’ careers, within the supportive and stimulating spirits of Australian academia, was so precious that they dearly appreciate. Still, there is also the scale economy in research: 'the more the merrier'. Perhaps, together, an Australian school of trade theory could have risen, then something we all longed for, something could have been, but was so closely missed.
Professor Henry Wan Jr.
Cornell University
I am greatly saddened to learn of the passing of Murray C. Kemp, Emeritus Professor of University of New South Wales (UNSW Sydney).
Murray, along with Samuelson and Solow, exerted a guiding influence on my life and career for the last 62 years, shaping me about how to be a research economist as well as inspiring me with ideas, professionally and personally. I first met Murray when he (on his way from McGill to UNSW Sydney) agreed to teach at MIT for two years at the invitation of Domar. At that time, I was a doctoral student with Samuelson as my thesis advisor. At MIT, Murray and Samuelson found each other on the gains from trade domain, and the topic looks forever different from before. Murray also kindly took over the trade course from Kindelberger (then on leave) whom in his text, calculus came mostly in Vanek's Appendix, to explain, say, the Stolper-Samuelson theorem which Samuelson taught at some college nearby.
Looking back, Samuelson remade heaven and earth of the Marshallian trade theory with his first six articles on trade, and Murray's MIT lecture notes (the core of his 1964 text) fixed the sun and moon in it, capturing exo-planets like 'vintage goods' variations floating around. It is my lasting honor that Murray adopted my thesis on 'trade war' as a chapter in his 1964 text, with the implications of a Sino-US trade war on Japan (in my mind, at the eve of Chairman Mao's redirection of attention inward to the Cultural Revolution).
On my 1961 return to Taiwan, then fiscally severely-famished on research materials (as journal series must compete against imported soybeans for US aid, causing years-long delays), I begged my gifted and understanding assistants that, to the best of their abilities, to lecture as I was lectured at MIT. Next then, a kind Murray moved heaven and earth, to 'tele-transport' me to Kensington in order to satisfy the Ricardian principle of comparative advantage. Personally, I enjoyed the opportunity tremendously as he invited me to his department to share the stimulating, congenial and civilized atmosphere there. When he was away to ANU for a term, I greatly missed the deeply, thoughtful interchanges with my colleagues.
Everyone knowing Murray would realize he was modest, but very rigorous in detail, and he would not do anything just to please. He read voluminously in economic history and history of economic thought. He was also a firm believer in the division of labour, and the principle of comparative advantage. Much as he was very organized and meticulous on details, he believed given the global professional affinity on rigorous reasoning, for his country, he had to fight his ‘corner’ and do less on administrative chores. Agree with him or not, let us all recognize, he did his very best as he knew how, even as he had to care personally for Thérèse, his wife, for long years.
It is my regret that, due to my carelessness, some mistakes were made on the validity of some of our earlier results, and Dixit kindly organized a graduate class at Princeton to locate and publish it (as a participant at Princeton informed me later). So, to honor the spirit of research, under Murray's leadership, we find a constructive resolution, settling all that can be settled by deductive logic, into what is in print, The Welfare Economics of Trade, and we would try all we could to delimit what we first defined a model, known now as the 'Kemp-Wan Propositions' to what we originally formulated. For anyone to apply the spirit of our initially formulated research, and developed a new, may be better model on its own, surely, refer them as a new theory, we would both applauded. But respectfully, we had to point out, what is not, to our abilities, we knew as derivable under our initial logic. The time and effort of future researchers cannot be wasted in perplexity.
It is also time for me in my humble responsibility to offer some of my personal, outdated and likely oversimplified observations. It would be much better, for the wonderful local Australian economic talents and intellectuals, that more analytical undergraduate courses were offered to prepare them for Murray’s graduate teaching and research guidance, rather than allowing the rare benefits of his supervision going mostly to cultivate younger foreign economists. Of course, Murray’s nurturing of his students’ careers, within the supportive and stimulating spirits of Australian academia, was so precious that they dearly appreciate. Still, there is also the scale economy in research: 'the more the merrier'. Perhaps, together, an Australian school of trade theory could have risen, then something we all longed for, something could have been, but was so closely missed.
Professor Henry Wan Jr.
Cornell University