Charles Edward Lindblom (1917-2018!) was a Chicago economics Ph.D. (1945) who ultimately climbed as far up the Yale ranks as you could get – a Sterling Professorship of Political Science and Economics. He was working on his 1977 book Politics and Markets when I took a course with him in the Spring semester of 1973. His lectures have left no real mark on me, but I recall my impression of watching a thinker in real time who would dare to attempt to think things through while lecturing. I guess it should come as no surprise that someone who attained fame through an article with the title “The Science of ‘Muddling Through’” (1959), talked the talk the way he perceived policymakers to walk the walk (incrementally).
In a different course (Democracy and its Critics) I experienced his long-time colleague and collaborator Robert Dahl as the opposite model of an equally content-rich but silky smooth lecture style. I am glad to have sat at the feet of both when I was still of an impressionable age.
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From: The Yale Banner of 1960
Associate Professor of Economics CHARLES E. LINDBLOM came to Yale in 1946, after receiving his B.A. at Stanford and his Ph.D. at the University of Chicago. Mr Lindblom has always had an interest in the fields where economics and political science converge, and thus he is active in both areas. In 1951 he held a Guggenheim Fellowship and later he was a fellow at the Center for Advance Studies in the Behavorial Sciences. Mr. Lindblom also assisted former Connecticut Governor Bowles [Fun fact: Gov. Chester Bowles was economist Sam Bowles‘ father.] on the problems of housing and compensation legislation. At present, Professor Lindblom is on a committee on Latin American economics for the Twentieth Century Fund, a consultant for the RAND Corporation, and a consultant to a United States Senate subcommittee. On the Yale scene, he is an advisor to the Political Union and has written Politics, Economics and Welfare with Mr. [Robert] Dahl and Unions and Capitalism; he is working on several books now. What time he can salvage from this busy schedule is devoted to woodworking and sculpting. Next year he will be a Ford Faculty Fellow in economics.
Source: The Yale Banner 1960, p. 39.