“Even when he was three years old, you would say something to him and no matter what, he would respond with ‘No!’ and then he would argue,” she said. “It would drive you crazy, but this was his way of learning.”
“When he was a teenager, this became more difficult,” she added. “It was his form of testing boundaries.”
The 18-year-old Summers soon shipped off to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He received his bachelor’s degree in 1975, and moved five minutes down the road to begin his Harvard career as a graduate student in economics, landing spots as a tutor in Lowell House and teaching fellow in Ec 10. Before finishing his dissertation, he began teaching economics as an assistant professor at MIT.
At 28, Summers finished his dissertation, “An Asset-Price Approach to Capital Income Taxation,” and Harvard awarded him a Ph.D. in 1982. After three years as assistant professor at MIT, he spent one year as an associate professor before heading to Washington to become a domestic policy economist for the President’s Council of Economic Advisers.
In 1983, at age 28, he returned to Harvard to become one of the youngest tenured professors in University history.
Four years later, Summers received a chair and served as the editor of a prominent economic journal, the Quarterly Journal of Economics.
In 1991, Summers left for Washington again to become the chief economist of the World Bank, a job that led him to help bail Mexico out of its 1995 financial crisis.
In the same year, Summers became deputy to U.S. Treasury Secretary Robert E. Rubin ’60, whose position Summers would himself assume four years later under President Bill Clinton.
“Whether it was the world bank or the treasury he always talked about the big objectives,” Anita Summers said. “The smaller things took on more meaning and content because they are tied to a bigger thing.”
In 2001 the Harvard Corporation appointed Summers the 27th president of Harvard. During his tenure, Summers has spoken about anti-semitism in higher education, began planning for a major science campus in the Allston neighborhood of Boston and advocating tenuring younger faculty at Harvard.
One faculty member who was not invited to the soiree questioned how Summers’ aging process might affect his views on faculty hiring.
“Of course the real question is: Is Larry now beyond the age where his best work is ahead of him, as he is fond of saying in testing faculty appointments?” the faculty member said.
During his tenure at Harvard he has drawn national attention for his combative nature and aggressive leadership style—traits his mother said she sees emerging in the next generation.
“Some of his children are acquiring the same talent,” she quipped.
Summers may be over the hill, but he seems to be enjoying the view. “So far, 50 is easier than 40,” he said yesterday. “When I turned 40, I couldn’t feel young anymore.” Now, he said, he no longer has that problem.
—Staff writer Lauren A. E. Schuker can be reached at schuker@fas.harvard.edu.