He demonstrated the power of committing oneself to a few simple assumptions about human behaviour and then relentlessly pursuing their logical implications. He developed and taught new ways of interpreting data, testing his theories by their ability to explain multiple disparate phenomena. His successes were spectacular and his techniques were widely emulated.

In several cases, Friedman’s methods inspired the creation of entire new subfields including the economic analysis of law, the quantitative approach to economic history, the economics of crime and punishment, the economics of family relationships, and the economic approach to finance—leading to multiple Nobel prizes for Friedman’s acolytes.

But Friedman’s influence extended beyond economists. To the public at large, he was the world’s foremost advocate for economic and personal freedom. Through his writings and his media appearances, he educated millions about how markets work and how governments often fail. He restored the respectability of classical liberal notions that had fallen into disfavour, and he did so not by artful propaganda but by conveying a deep and lasting understanding of the ideas themselves.

And he influenced policymakers. In the United States, he helped to end the military draft, to broaden educational choice, and to change the regulatory climate. Worldwide, almost all central banks now follow policies that are grounded in Friedman’s insights and recommendations (updated, of course, for the changed world we now live in), and have thereby made the world a richer and more stable place, largely delivered from the sort of disastrous policy errors that were once routine. When the Soviet Union collapsed, Friedman’s writings inspired the design of new institutions in several former Communist countries, and those that adopted this course were rewarded with prosperity and freedom.

After an early flirtation with statistics (where he developed the “Friedman Test” to interpret disagreements among judges in, say, a skating competition), Friedman moved on to study economics, writing a 1946 doctoral dissertation on, among other things, the effects of occupational licensing, a subject to which he frequently returned. The next year, he accepted a job at the University of Chicago, where he did most of his groundbreaking academic work on consumption behaviour, monetary theory, and monetary history, and served as the undisputed intellectual leader of the economics department for 30 years. In 1976, he was awarded the Nobel Prize.

The public became acquainted with Friedman through his 1962 bestseller Capitalism and Freedom and his subsequent series of approximately 300 columns in Newsweek Magazine, along with his increasing presence as an advisor to policymakers. After his retirement in 1977, Friedman moved to the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and, in collaboration with his wife Rose and the television producer Robert Chitester, created the television series Free to Choose and an accompanying book by the same title. Both the TV series and the book drew huge audiences and cemented Friedman’s worldwide celebrity. Several Eastern European leaders specifically cited Free to Choose as a major inspiration for their new economic policies after the fall of the Soviet Union.

It would take several large volumes to do justice to Friedman’s extraordinary contributions to economic theory, economic practice, economic policy, and economic literacy. The few brief chapters that follow will give an overview of what those volumes might contain.