Alvin Hansen Dies; Professor Brought Keynes to Harvard

Alvin H. Hansen, former Littauer Professor of Political Economics and one of America's foremost Keynesian economics, died in Alexander. Va. Friday. He was 87 years old.

"He was one of the three of four ablest economics ever to teach at Harvard. Edward S. Mason. Lamont University, Professor, said Friday.

"He was warm and friend's not at all a showoff." Mason said.

Paul A. Samuelson professor of Economics at MIT and one of Hansen's former students said that balsa against Keynesian economics at Harvard.

Hansen and his students, Samuelson said, were responsible for persuading President Franklin D. Roosevelt '04 to institute the fiscal reforms of the later New Deal programs.

Hansen, who was a professor here from 1937 to 1958, wrote 15 books, mostly on the effects of government spending on the economy.

Arthur A. Smithies, professor of Economics, called Hansen the "apostle of Keynes" and characterized him as a "home-spun, great figure of a man."

Hansen was born in South Dakota, the son of Danish immigrants. He graduated from Yankton College in South Dakota and did his graduate work at the University of Wisconsin.

Before coming to Harvard, he taught at Brown and the University of Minnesota. He spent 1929 in Europe on a Guggenheim Fellowship