Today brings the sad news of the passing of one of the greatest economists of all time, Robert E. Lucas, Jr. I was fortunate to have Bob as a teacher in multiple classes, to work as his teaching assistant, and to discuss economics with him on a handful of occasions outside the classroom. 

Over the next few days, I expect we'll see many tributes to Bob appear from people who knew him better than I did. I'll post the highlights here and may even add some recollections of my own.

To start, an anecdote from Luis Garicano on Twitter:

It was the 3rd year of our PhD. After two gruelling years (the Core, with less than 50% pass rate on Year 1, the Prelims, with another 50% of students gone in Year 2) we were having our first reception as "real" grad students outside in the Social Science Quadrangle of
@UChicago.

Lucas approach me, asked me how I was doing.

I said after two brutal years, I was very happy. I was enjoying thinking about ideas, about which problem I would tackle for my dissertation, reading a lot and learning a lot, trying to figure out the next step.

He was very disappointed, almost upset, by my answer:
"Ideas are hard. What you do not understand takes over your life. You puzzle over it, you cannot sleep until you solve it. This is not a game you enjoy. This is a challenge that obsesses you." He said.

That was his intensity. He was always learning, always trying to figure out the next problem. And few people did as much to advance economics.

Ireland: He probably doesn't remember this, and John Cochrane doesn't remember it either, but I do. There was one summer when I was working on my thesis, and I was converging on the library that morning together with a few other econ PhD students, and we were standing on the steps talking about something, that I don't remember what, and just then Bob came up the walk, walked up the stairs and said his hellos, but kept walking quickly, as quickly as he could into the library, I guess to find a book or a journal. And just a couple minutes later, John Cochrane came riding by. He used to ride his bike to work, and he stopped, looked at us and said, "Hey guys, I think Bob is trying to tell us something."

Ireland: And you know, we all laughed, went into library and got to work as fast as we could.

Tributes from The National Review, and The National Review (again) by Jon Hartley,  University of Chicago News, Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, Barcelona School of Economics, Tyler Cowen at the Washington Post, Carl Walsh, National Public Radio (audio), The Economist.

An appreciation by Ivan Werning, and by several other economists.

And then there is this misleading and unnecessarily politicized obituary from the New York Times.

A story about the origins of the Lucas tree model, that is new to me (h/t Matteo Maggiori):