Despite the different paths the three men have followed in the years since their graduations, they have shared at least one common experience: the thrill of receiving the prize, which they describe as "unforgettable" and "amazing."
Miller says he learned he had won the prize at 5 a.m.--noon Stockholm time. "When you have children, it tends to worry you when the phone rings in the middle of the night," he says.
And even esteemed economists are not exempt from that most common of winning feelings: complete disbelief.
"Especially because the voice on the other end has a Swedish accent, one thinks about the possibility of a practical joke," Miller says. "But the Nobel Committee is aware of this, and have a friend of yours standing by, authenticating."
And once they accepted the fact they had won, the winners say, they had the experience of a lifetime.
"It's really a rush--very pleasant and very exciting," Anderson says. "One doesn't realize it until it happens, both because of the media attention and because the Swedes make a great fuss. There's a solid week of wining and dining, and taking good care of you."
Solow's first reaction, however, was somewhat more subdued.
"Let's go back to sleep," Solow says he told his wife.
Anderson's wife says her husband began enjoying the benefits of winning immediately.
"When the prize was announced," Joyce Anderson continues, "there was immediately a congregation in the auditorium of Bell Laboratories, where he was working. He came home grinning and saying, "You can get addicted to the roar of the crowd."
Still, the distinction has not changed her husband's life much, according to Joyce Anderson, who has known him since his Harvard graduate school days.
"He doesn't think of it in elitist terms," she says. "Although I guess you do carry around this little halo wherever you go."
Harvard Then and Now
After a half-century, the three professors say today's undergraduate education--apart from its lack of military content--is essentially the same as that which they received.
"I've never gone a year without teaching an undergraduate course and I don't think methods have really changed," Solow says. "You still stand up with a piece of chalk and explain things."
Indeed the real difference may be with the undergraduates themselves.
"The good kids come much better prepared. They are likely to have had a good deal more science than we did," Anderson says. "High school science in the U.S. isn't great, but you should have seen it in the thirties."