Mario Einaudi

Mario Einaudi (1904–1994) was an Italian scholar of political theory and European comparative politics.

Biography He was born in 1904 in Italy in one of the most influential intellectual families in Italy. His father, Luigi Einaudi, was one of Italy's great economic thinkers and later became the second President of the Republic of Italy (1948–55). His brother, Giulio Einaudi, was antifascist and the founder of the leading intellectual publishing house Giulio Einaudi Editore. A graduate of the University of Turin's distinguished law faculty, Mario Einaudi married Manon Michels, the daughter of the sociologist Robert Michels, in 1933.

Career After graduation from Turin with a dissertation on Edmund Burke, Einaudi went to Berlin, where he met German jurists Friedrich Meinecke and Carl Schmitt. He then spent two years at the London School of Economics, working with William Beveridge, Harold Laski, Graham Wallas and A. D. Lindsay. His foresight and leadership resulted in a design for the Center that insured its viability and growth into the future. Starting with a $3.25 million grant from the Ford Foundation in 1962, he raised more than $11 million to fund and endow international studies at Cornell during his leadership of the Center from 1960 to 1962 and 1966 to 1968.

Fondazione Luigi Einaudi In 1964, he founded the Fondazione Luigi Einaudi in Turin, Italy in honor of his father. As Italian universities entered the turbulent 1960s, Einaudi recognized that European scholars were without necessary relief from teaching and administration needed to devote themselves to research. Hence, the Fondazione Luigi Einaudi was formed to transplant the American idea of the independent research institute to Italy. Today, it houses one of the world's most important economic history collections and gives postgraduate fellowships for students from around the world.

Retirement Although Einaudi retired in 1972, he remained active in Cornell's Center for International Studies, advising students, supporting its many activities, and inspiring the founding and expansion of the Institute for European Studies. With the help of the Italian Government, Einaudi also raised the funds for the Luigi Einaudi Chair in European and International Studies at Cornell. Since 1987, the Chair brings distinguished European scholars working in fields related to Luigi Einaudi's interest to the Cornell campus on a rotating basis.

In 1991, the Cornell's Center for International Studies was renamed the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies. Cornell's Board of Trustees honored him for his long dedication to the University and as a "tireless proponent of clear and critical thinking, democracy, and ethics in politics; and a firm believer in the power of human values to transform the world."

Mario Einaudi died in 1994 in Piedmont, Italy.

Selected works

The Physiocratic Doctrine of Judicial Control, Harvard University Press, 1938 Communism in Western Europe, Cornell University Press, 1951 Christian Democracy in Italy and France(co-authored with François Goguel), University of Notre Dame Press, 1952 Nationalization in France and Italy (co-authored with Maurice Byé and Ernesto Rossi), Cornell University Press, 1955 The Roosevelt Revolution and the New American State, New York: Harcourt Brace, 1959 The Early Rousseau, Cornell University Press, 1967