Quote of the day.

At the end of spring quarter, I had looked in the back of Kenneth Boulding’s textbook and read Boulding’s description of Paul Samuelson’s Foundations of Economic Analysis as “the most important book in economics since the war.” I had a summer to prepare for the beginning of graduate work in earnest, and there was no point in wasting the time on the second most important book. I got a copy from the library and all that summer, during lunch and coffee breaks from my research assistant job, I worked through Samuelson’s first four chapters. When I got home each night, I wrote out what I had learned that day, line by line.

Bob Lucas, Professional Memoir

I have read this memoir many times. Lucas' presentation is interesting, honest and encouraging. Every researcher starts his career from the 'line by by line' stage, even he is Robert Lucas. The story of the search paper with Prescott tells me many things, one of which is that math has never been overrated.