Robbins immediately recognized Hayek as a powerful ally in his arguments against public expenditures, credit expansion, and tariffs. He made his enthusiasm very clear when the LSE’s director, William Beveridge, suggested that Hayek might be an appropriate choice for the longvacant Tooke Chair of Economic Science that Jacob Viner had just declined. Hayek, who had engaged in idle daydreams about the possibility of a professorship in London, was fl atly astonished at his good fortune in receiving the offer. As the longtime hub of the fi nancial world and an increasingly dynamic center for economic thought, it seemed an ideal situation. “I mean, if you are at thirtytwo a professor at the London School of Economics,” he later told an interviewer, “you don’t have any further ambitions.”

Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion, loc. 68