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Rose Director Friedman ’32

A picture of Rose Director Friedman and Milton Friedman

Rose Director Friedman ’32, August 18, 2009, in Davis, California, from heart failure. Born in a Ukraine village, Rose arrived in Portland as a toddler, emigrating with her family from Russia before World War I. Her father ran a small general store. Rose attended Reed for two years, then transferred to the University of Chicago, where she earned a BA in philosophy. In a graduate classroom in 1932, she found herself seated next to a bright fellow named Milton Friedman. They married six years later. Their collaboration in the field of economics gained them international recognition-including a Nobel Prize for Milton in 1976. Milton was a free market champion and leading thinker in the Chicago School of economics. The couple also founded the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice in 1996, to promote greater latitude in school choice through vouchers and other programs. Rose studied consumer purchases at the Bureau of Home Economics. She also was on the staff of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the National Bureau of Economic Research. Her research on consumer spending was included in Milton's book A Theory of the Consumption Function (1957). The couple began their collaborative writing with the book Capitalism and Freedom (1962). They followed up with Free to Choose (1980), which became a best seller and the basis of a television series that was broadcast worldwide. Rose and Milton also wrote Tyranny of the Status Quo (1984) and a dual memoir, Two Lucky People (1998). Independently, Rose published a pamphlet, Poverty—Definition and Perspective, and a series of articles, Milton Friedman—Husband and Colleague, for the Oriental Economist (1976-77). Rose's cousins Regina Tarlow Kriss ’47 and Pauline Tarlow Mosley ’36 also attended Reed. Survivors include a daughter and son, four grandchildren, three great-grandchildren. Milton died in 2006.

Appeared in Reed magazine: March 2010