Maurice F. C. Allais

Brief Biography

Born to the owners of a small, Parisian cheese shop, Maurice Felix Charles Allais was a Nobel Prize-winning economist. Allais, whose father had died in a German prison camp during World War I, attended secondary school south of Paris in Sceaux. Though fascinated by history, he was pressured by his mathematics instructor to study engineering at the prestigious Ecole Polytechnique, receiving a masters degree in 1933. Like the other top students in his graduating class, Allais joined the Corps National des Mines after a mandatory year of military training and service.

At age twenty six, Allais was in charge of the Nantes Mines and Quarries Service. In 1939, he was called to the Alpine Army on the French-Italian board and was assigned command of a heavy artillery battery. His military career was short live, however, given his release from service after the armistice of June 10, 1940. Allais returned to his job in Nantes, working his way up to Director of le Bureau of Mines Documentation and Statistics in Paris. In 1944, he joined Ecole National Superieure des Mines as Professor of Economics, where he remained until his death. In the late 1940s, he also began his long tenure as Director of the Economic Analysis Centre at the National Centre for Scientific Research (NCSR).

Following the Second World War until the official formation of the European Economic Community in 1958, Allais played an active role in many international conferences that aimed to establish a single European economic zone. He was also a proponent for the growth and continuation of cross-Atlantic cohesion, serving as rapporteur at an international NATO conference held in Washington, DC.

In 1957, Allais was jointly awarded the Frederick W. Lanchester Prize for best publication in operations research. His Management Science article, “Method of appraising economic prospects of mining exploration over large territories: Algerian Sahara case study,” was heralded as an outstanding example of quantitative analysis used as a reasonable basis for an actual management decision. The prize committee lauded the broadness of its scope and the imaginative use of standard techniques.

Among his many other professional and academic appointments, Allais was Professor of Theoretical Economics at the University of Paris, Member of the National Committee of NCSR, Professor of Economics and the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva, and Chairman of the European Economic Community’s Commission of Experts for the Study of Options in Transport Tariff Policy. In 1978, he received the most distinguished honor in French Science, the Gold Medal of the NCSR. 

For a sizable portion of his life, much of Allais’s research received little recognition outside of France. It was therefore a delightful surprise when he became the first Frenchman to receive the 1988 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel.  Allais was internationally celebrated “for his pioneering contributions to the theory of markets and efficient utilization of resources.” Never losing his passion for history, Allais published a number of works on the rise and fall of civilizations from an economic perspective. He passed away at ninety-nine years old.

Other Biographies

Wikipedia Entry for Maurice Allais

(2008) Maurice Allais. Henderson D., ed. in The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics. Library of Economics and Liberty. (link)

The Famous People. Profiles: Maurice Allais. Accessed May 30, 2015. (link)