Education
Arrow was born on August 23, 1921, in New York City to parents of Romanian Jewish origins. His family was very supportive of his education.
He graduated from Townsend Harris High School and then earned a Bachelor's degree from the City College of New York in 1940 in mathematics, where he was a member of Sigma Phi Epsilon. At Columbia University, he received a Master's degree in 1941. From 1946 to 1949 he spent his time partly as a graduate student at Columbia and partly as a research associate at the Cowles Commission for Research in Economics at the University of Chicago. During that time he also held the rank of Assistant Professor in Economics at the University of Chicago. In 1951 he earned his Ph.D. from Columbia.
Arrow is brother to the economist Anita Summers, uncle to economist Larry Summers, and brother-in-law of the economist Robert Summers.
Arrow and his wife Selma have two children, sons David and Andrew, both actors. Andrew is married to actress Donna Lynne Champlin.
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Famous quotes containing the word education:
“The most general deficiency in our sort of culture and education is gradually dawning on me: no one learns, no one strives towards, no one teaches—enduring loneliness.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“There are words in that letter to his wife, respecting the education of his daughters, which deserve to be framed and hung over every mantelpiece in the land. Compare this earnest wisdom with that of Poor Richard.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I envy neither the heart nor the head of any legislator who has been born to an inheritance of privileges, who has behind him ages of education, dominion, civilization, and Christianity, if he stands opposed to the passage of a national education bill, whose purpose is to secure education to the children of those who were born under the shadow of institutions which made it a crime to read.”
—Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (1825–1911)