Sunday's Profile, Alvin E. Roth

The Matchmaker. Here [Marginal Revolution and Gregory Mankiw]

Roth was already well established in economics by the time of that Princeton talk. As a professor at the University of Pittsburgh, he had played an instrumental role in turning an economics department aimed at training undergraduates into a nationally recognized research institution. His role was an informal one — while he wasn’t chair of the department, he was, as his onetime colleague John Kagel said, its “600 pound-gorilla.” Thanks to an offer from Yale, Roth had secured a commitment from the university administration to fund the hiring of more than a dozen new economics professors. It was a staggering number, which speaks to just how badly Pitt wanted him on its team.