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Gordon Tullock (1922- )

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Readings in Public Choice and Constitutional Political Economy

Gordon Tullock was born in Rockford, Illinois on February 16, 1922. His father, George was a hardy Midwesterner of Scottish ancestry, his mother, Helen, was of equally hardy Pennsylvania Dutch stock. He obtained his basic education in the public schools of that city, displaying from early childhood a superior intellectual ability that clearly distinguished him from his peers. In 1940, Tullock departed for the School of Law at the University of Chicago to combine a two-year program of undergraduate courses with a four-year formal law program. In fact, he completed the initial two-year program in a single year.

His law school program was interrupted by his being drafted into military service as an infantry rifleman in 1943, but not before he had all but completed a one-semester course in economics taught by Henry Simons. This course was to be Tullock’s only formal exposure to economics, a fact that no doubt enhanced rather than hindered his future success in contributing highly original ideas to that discipline.

This chapter is a revised and updated version of an essay that first appeared in The Encyclopedia of Public Choice edited by Charles K. Rowley and Friedrich Schneider and published in 2004 by Kluwer Academic Publishers, Volume I, pp. 105–117.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. The Locke Institute, 5118 Dungannon Road, Fairfax, Virginia, 22030, USA

    Charles K. Rowley (Duncan Black, Professor of Economics at George Mason University and General Director of the Locke Institute)

  2. Department of Economics, George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia, 22030, USA

    Charles K. Rowley (Duncan Black, Professor of Economics at George Mason University and General Director of the Locke Institute)

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Rowley, C.K. (2008). Gordon Tullock (1922- ). In: Readings in Public Choice and Constitutional Political Economy. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-75870-1_8

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