Milton Friedman 1912-2006

He was the greatest 20th Century economist and philosopher. What more can be said?

SAN FRANCISCO — Milton Friedman was the rare public intellectual whose ideas extended from the ivory tower to seats of power around the world.

So when the economist, a tireless proponent of free enterprise, died Thursday at 94, it was fitting that he was lauded by former heads of state as well as his academic peers. President Bush said that "America has lost one of its greatest citizens."

"Milton Friedman was a revolutionary thinker and extraordinary economist whose work helped advance human dignity and human freedom," Bush said of the 1976 Nobel Prize winner.

Mr. Friedman, a longtime professor at the University of Chicago, died in San Francisco, said Robert Fanger, a spokesman for the Milton and Rose D. Friedman Foundation in Indianapolis. His cause of death wasn't released.

Tributes quickly followed from universities, boardrooms and politicians.