A. C. Pigou, 1877–1959

Those of us who went up to Cambridge in the late 1950s remember Pigou as an eccentrically clad, unapproachable figure sitting in a deck chair on the grass of the front court of King’s. At that time he refused to discuss economics and was reputed to read only comics and ‘shockers’. Sartorial disarray was not, in Pigou’s case, merely a product of old age for Marshall had complained to C. R. Fay, many years before: ‘Fay, I do wish you’d speak to Pigou on a personal matter — a rather delicate matter. I saw him coming out of Bowes’ shop in a Norfolk jacket with holes in both elbows. So bad for the Economics Tripos!’1 Pigou’s various eccentricities, closely linked to his shyness, had their attractive and unattractive aspects. He had a great sense of fun, particularly in his earlier years. Corrie reports If every one of his friends recounted their amusing recollections of the Prof it would fill a volume … the remarkable thing about the Prof was the rapidity with which he could relax from serious work and plunge with boyish enjoyment into any sort of hair-brained [sic] scheme.2