Mathematician, Educator, Economist (1921–2004)
Gerard Debreu, a French-born American mathematician and economist, won the Nobel Prize in economics for his research on general equilibrium theory.
If you hate the amount of maths in micro you can thank Debreu! His research on the equilibrium between prices, production, and consumer demand in a free-market economy was highly mathematical.
Additionally, he studied problems within the theory of cardinal utility, focusing on the additive decomposition of utility functions defined on a Cartesian product of sets (producing even more maths for economics students all over the world!!).
“I had become interested in economics, an interest that was transformed into a lifetime dedication when I met with the mathematical theory of general economic equilibrium.”
– Gerard Debreu