John Richard Nicholas Stone (‘Dick’) was born on 30 Aug. 1913 in London, the son of barrister Gilbert Stone. He was educated at Westminster College (1926-30), then spent a year in India with his father. In 1931 he went to Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge to read law. After the first two years he changed to the Economics tripos, despite parental objection, and completed his BA in 1935. After graduation he worked for the law firm C. Heath & Co, Lloyds Brokers, but continued his interest in economics in his spare time. In 1936 he married Winifred Jenkins; together they wrote the ‘Trends’ articles for 'Industry Illustrated' on current economic trends. With the outbreak of war, Stone spent a brief spell in the Ministry of Economic Warfare in 1940, then transferred to the Offices of War Cabinet, Central Statistical Office where he remained from 1940 to 1945, working with James Meade on the first modern system of national accounting. From 1941 he was also assistant to J. M. Keynes in the treasury. At the same time he worked with the National Institute of Economic and Social Research, a connection which continued when he took up directorship of the Department of Applied Economics in 1945. He was elected a Fellow of King’s in conjunction with this appointment, and remained a Fellow of the College until his death. Stone’s first marriage was dissolved in 1941, and he married Feodora Leontinoff, the secretary of the National Institute. They divided their time between London and Cambridge. When Feodora died in 1956, Stone moved to Cambridge with his daughter, Caroline. In 1955 he relinquished the directorship of the Department of Applied Economics and took up the P. D. Leake Professorship of Finance and Accounting, a post which he held until 1980. In 1960 he married Giovanna Croft-Murray, and in the same year began work with Alan Brown on the Cambridge Growth Project to build a disaggregated model of the British economy. In addition to his work at the University of Cambridge, Stone worked for the United Nations and the Organisation for European Economic Cooperation (OEEC). He died in Cambridge on 6 December, 1991. Stone worked mainly in the fields of national accounting, demand analysis, econometric models, socio-demographic accounts and models. He published the first ‘Standardised System of National Accounts’ in 1952, ‘Towards a System of Social and Demographic Statistics’, 1972, and many other books and papers. A partial bibliography is included in M. H. Pesaran ‘An interview with Professor Sir Richard Stone’, published in ‘Econometric Theory’, 7, 1991. Honours: Emeritus Professor, University of Cambridge, 1955; Honorary President of the Econometric Society, 1955; Honorary doctorates from the Universities of Oslo and Brussells, 1965; Geneva, 1971; Warwick, 1975; Sorbonne, 1977 and Bristol, 1978. CBE, 1946; KBE, 1978. Fellow of the British Academy, 1956. Nobel Prize for Economics, 1984. Honorary Fellow, Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge, 1976.

For further biographical details of Richard Stone, the reader is referred to the following works: 'Annual Report of King's College, Cambridge' 1992, pp. 31-38. Deaton, A. 'Stone, Richard John Nicholas' in J. Eatwell, M. Milgate and P. Newman (eds) 'The New Palgrave: A Dictionary of Economics' (Macmillan: London, 1987) vol. 4, pp. 509-512. 'John Richard Nicholas Stone, 1913-1991' in 'Proceedings of the British Academy' vol. 82, 1993, pp. 475-492. Pasinetti, Luigi 'Sir Richard Stone' in 'The Caian' Nov. 1992, pp. 112-118. H. M. Peresan 'An interview with Professor Sir Richard Stone' in 'Econometric theory' 7, 1991, pp. 85-112 (this includes a bibliography). 'Stone, J. R. N. An autobiographical sketch' in 'Les Prix Nobel' (Almquist and Wicksell International: Stockholm, 1985).