Sudha Shenoy

Following Steve’s post, I just wanted to say something and not just in the comment section. Professor Sudha Shenoy was a passionate intellectual who was truly dedicated to economics and the understanding of the world. Ms Shenoy often held unorthodox views in economic history, which is what made her work profoundly interesting and challenging. I posted twice about her research in this blog. See first my post on her view of the Industrial Revolution. Ms Shenoy claimed there never was a revolution as such, but rather a gradual evolution in the complexity of Western economies and that it accelerated around the late 18th century. I also put online a reading list she sent me for young economists and others interested in economic history.

Ms Shenoy came to visit the students at GMU two or three times over the last few years (one of the papers she presented was on the Industrial Revolution). I saw her last with Peter Boettke during our trip to New Zealand in August 2006. She had made the trip especially from Australia to come and hear Pete deliver the 2006 Trotter Lecture in Wellington. We had lunch with her during that trip and she told us stories about India and Hayek. Ms Shenoy explained how her father (who was a student of Hayek at LSE) fought the rise of socialism in post-WWII India and opposed the ideas of many intellectuals and politicians of that era (a heroic task considering the intellectual climate in India and elsewhere at the time). Ms Shenoy was a very honest, talented, and earnest person. Her passing is a great loss to the world and to Austrian economics. Ms Shenoy, RIP.