HAYEK, Friedrich August von (1899-92), Austrian economist and Nobel laureate. Born in Vienna, von Hayek earned a doctorate at the University of Vienna in 1927 and spent some years in public service. He began a long academic career by holding the post of professor of economics and statistics at the University of London (1931-50); subsequently he was professor of moral and economic science at the University of Chicago (1950-62). An economic traditionalist, von Hayek won a wide reputation with The Road to Serfdom (1944), in which he argued that governments should not intervene in the control of inflation or other economic matters. He retired in 1962 but was later appointed professor of economics at the University of Freiburg, West Germany. Returning to Austria in 1969, he became visiting professor at the University of Salzburg. In 1974 he received the Nobel Prize in economic science.
Analytic philosophy and the Vienna Circle