Murray Newton Rothbard (; March 2, 1926 - January 7, 1995) was an American heterodox economist of the Austrian School, a historian, and a political theorist whose writings and personal influence played a seminal role in the development of modern right-libertarianism. Rothbard was the founder and leading theoretician of anarcho-capitalism, a staunch advocate of historical revisionism, and a central figure in the twentieth-century American libertarian movement.
In 1953, in New York City, he married JoAnn Schumacher (1928-1999), whom he called Joey. JoAnn was his editor and a close adviser, as well as hostess of his "Rothbard Salon". They enjoyed a loving marriage, and Rothbard often called her "the indispensable framework" behind his life and achievements. According to Joey, patronage from the Volker Fund allowed Rothbard to work from home as a freelance theorist and pundit for the first fifteen years of their marriage. The Fund collapsed in 1962, leading Rothbard to seek employment from various New York academic institutions. He was offered a part-time position teaching economics to the engineering students of Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute in 1966, at age 40. This institution had no economics department or economics majors, and Rothbard derided its social science department as "Marxist." However, Justin Raimondo writes that Rothbard liked his role with Brooklyn Polytechnic because working only two days a week gave him freedom to contribute to developments in libertarian politics.  Rothbard continued in this role for twenty years, until 1986. Then 60 years old, Rothbard left Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute for the Lee Business School at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, where he held the title of S.J. Hall Distinguished Professor of Economics, an endowed chair paid for by a libertarian businessman. According to Rothbard's friend, colleague and fellow Misesian economist Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Rothbard led a "fringe existence" in academia, but was able to attract a large number of "students and disciples" through his writings, thereby becoming "the creator and one of the principal agents of the contemporary libertarian movement." Rothbard maintained his position at UNLV from 1986 until his death. Rothbard founded the Center for Libertarian Studies in 1976 and the Journal of Libertarian Studies in 1977. In 1982, he co-founded the Ludwig von Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, and was vice president of academic affairs until 1995. The Institute's Review of Austrian Economics, a heterodox economics journal later renamed the Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics, was also founded by Rothbard in 1987.  After Rothbard's death, Joey reflected on Rothbard's happiness and bright spirit. "...he managed to make a living for 40 years without having to get up before noon. This was important to him." She recalled how Rothbard would begin every day with a phone conversation with his colleague Llewellyn Rockwell. "Gales of laughter would shake the house or apartment, as they checked in with each other. Murray thought it was the best possible way to start a day." Rothbard was irreligious and agnostic toward the existence of God, describing himself as a "mixture of an agnostic and a Reform Jew." Despite identifying as an agnostic and an atheist, Rothbard was critical of the "left-libertarian hostility to religion". In Rothbard's later years, many of his friends anticipated that he would convert to Catholicism, but he never did. The New York Times obituary called Rothbard "an economist and social philosopher who fiercely defended individual freedom against government intervention." CANNOTANSWER
Marriage, employment, and activism
Murray Rothbard's parents were David and Rae Rothbard, Jewish immigrants to the U.S. from Poland and Russia, respectively. David Rothbard was a chemist. Murray attended Birch Wathen, a private school in New York City. Rothbard later stated that he much preferred Birch Wathen to the "debasing and egalitarian public school system" he had previously attended in the Bronx.  Rothbard wrote of having grown up as a "right-winger" (adherent of the "Old Right") among friends and neighbors who were "communists or fellow-travelers." Rothbard characterized his immigrant father as an individualist who embraced the American values of minimal government, free enterprise, private property, and "a determination to rise by one's own merits". "[A]ll socialism seemed to me monstrously coercive and abhorrent."  He attended Columbia University, where he received a Bachelor of Arts degree in mathematics in 1945 and, eleven years later, his PhD in economics in 1956. The delay in receiving his PhD was due in part to conflict with his advisor, Joseph Dorfman, and in part to Arthur Burns rejecting his doctoral dissertation. Burns was a longtime friend of the Rothbard family and their neighbor at their Manhattan apartment building. It was only after Burns went on leave from the Columbia faculty to head President Eisenhower's Council of Economic Advisors that Rothbard's thesis was accepted and he received his doctorate. Rothbard later stated that all of his fellow students there were extreme leftists and that he was one of only two Republicans on the Columbia campus at the time.  During the 1940s Rothbard became acquainted with Frank Chodorov and read widely in libertarian-oriented works by Albert Jay Nock, Garet Garrett, Isabel Paterson, H. L. Mencken and others, as well as Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises. In the early 1950s, when Mises was teaching at the Wall Street division of New York University Business School, Rothbard attended Mises' unofficial seminar. Rothbard was greatly influenced by Mises' book, Human Action. Rothbard attracted the attention of the William Volker Fund, a group that provided financial backing to promote various "right-wing" ideologies in the 1950s and early 1960s. The Volker Fund paid Rothbard to write a textbook to explain Human Action in a form which could be used to introduce college undergraduates to Mises' views; a sample chapter he wrote on money and credit won Mises's approval. For ten years, Rothbard was paid a retainer by the Volker Fund, which designated him a "senior analyst." As Rothbard continued his work, he enlarged the project. The result was Rothbard's book Man, Economy, and State, published in 1962. Upon its publication, Mises praised Rothbard's work effusively. CANNOTANSWER
Education