This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Tuesday, July 31st, 2007. I'm Caleb Brown.

Today Milton Friedman, Economist, and Nobel Laureate would have celebrated his 95th birthday.

Friedman, as an economist, made important contributions to macroeconomics,

economic history, public policy, and other areas.

For those reasons and more, the Cato Institute began awarding the Milton Friedman Prize

for Advancing Liberty.

To Mark Friedman's birthday, we bring you a few comments from Thomas Sol, a former student of

Friedman on a side of the man less known to the public. His comments came at the

2004 dinner announcing the recipient of the Friedman Prize.

Milton Friedman was a great teacher.

Though I am not sure that I would have fully realized that when I was a student of his.

He gave lectures, but other people gave lectures. He had a reading list, but other people gave lectures.

He had a reading list, but other people had reading lists.

He gave exams, but other people gave exams.

Those who believe in the perennial fallacy that you can tell a great teacher by observing him in the classroom

would have missed the boat by merely observing Professor Friedman in the classroom.

The only strikingly different thing that I noticed about him at the time was his rule that students

were not to arrive late and enter the classroom after his lecture had begun,

distracting him in the class.

This made an impression on me because I arrived a few minutes late

at one of his lectures, and had to turn around and walk back to my

dormitory room, wondering all the way what I was missing that would be on the exam?

...