Dong Oh · CC BY 3.0

Leonid Hurwicz fled Poland for the United States in 1939 after the Nazi invasion and, working at MIT and the Cowles Commission before settling at the University of Minnesota, developed the field of mechanism design — the study of how to structure institutions and incentives so that self-interested people reveal the truth and produce good collective outcomes. He shared the 2007 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences with Eric Maskin and Roger Myerson at age ninety, one of the oldest laureates ever to receive it.