from Vanderbilt University, Daly taught economics for a time, then went to Northeast Brazil to teach as Ford Foundation Visiting Professor at the University of Ceara.

Still, that sophomore-year mistake led to his life’s work - attempting to ground economics in both the physical sciences and in the humanities and ethics. I kind of thought it had both feet in the air,” he says. But he later decided choosing economics was a mistake, “because economics along with social science generally does not really have one foot in the sciences and the other foot in the humanities. He believed economics was a good choice for a major because it combined humanities, science and philosophy, and he figured it might help him make a living upon graduation. Daly came of intellectual age in the late 1950s and early ’60s while attending Rice University in Houston, Texas, his home state.

As a professor, he’s encouraged students to look beyond the existing neoclassical economic paradigm - the one that says we can, in essence, have infinite growth on a finite planet. His life’s work is to explore how massive-scale human activities can be ordered in ways that take into account the biosphere - “ecosystem services” in economic parlance - the life support systems on which everything depends. Herman Daly, Ph.D., is an ecological economist and professor emeritus at the University of Maryland’s School of Public Policy.

For the common good herman daly