Dr. William Breit has been selected as San Antonio College's Outstanding Former Student for 2005-2006. Breit is an Emeritus Professor of Economics at Trinity University and has served since 1977 as an Adjunct Scholar for the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research. He will be honored at the San Antonio College Commencement Ceremony, to be held on May 6, at 10 a.m., at Freeman Coliseum.
After graduating from Thomas Jefferson High School (where his chemistry lab partner was future Nobel Prize winner Floyd Curl), Breit attended San Antonio College in 1950 at its original downtown location and then in 1951 after it had moved to its current location at 1300 San Pedro Ave., where he earned his AA degree.
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Dr. William Breit
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His most influential professor was Truett Chance. "He was a wonderful teacher. He opened my eyes to a whole new world of economics," said Breit. He added, "I was excited by the way he taught. He stressed how economics is a way of thinking, very helpful in solving problems of all kinds in society - truly a social science. Economics brings order to a system I would have thought would be very chaotic; it's a beautiful system of thought, which inspired me to do more reading."
Dr. Breit continued to study economics, earning his B.A. and M.A. degrees at the University of Texas at Austin and his Ph.D. degree from Michigan State University. He has taught economics at Michigan State University, Louisiana State University, University of Virginia, and Trinity University, where he was a Distinguished Professor of Economics and is currently Professor Emeritus.
He describes his economic philosophy as eclectic, picking and choosing the best ideas from the best economists, which for Breit includes both John Kenneth Galbraith and Milton Friedman. In fact, Friedman was the first in a long series of Nobel Prize-winning economists Breit brought to Trinity University in a lecture series he created, which led to the MIT Press publication Breit co-edited titled "Lives of the Laureates."
In addition to his numerous academic publications, Breit is also the author of several mysteries, penning three novels with his University of Virginia colleague Kenneth G. Elzinga under the pseudonym Marshall Jevons (the names of two 19th Century economists). The sleuth character, based on Milton Friedman, solves crimes using economic principles. Breit's favorite non-academic writers include Agatha Christi, Raymond Chandler, Dasheill Hammet, John Updike, Graham Greene, and Philip Roth.
Some of his many honors include the Phi Beta Kappa Book Prize for the book "The Antitrust Penalties," Distinguished Alumni Award from Michigan State University, a Southern Economic Association Special Session in 2001 titled "The Worlds of William Breit," and the Southwestern Social Sciences Association Distinguished Achievement Award in 2002.
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