Otto Neurath

Günther Sandner provides a wide-ranging history of Otto Neurath (1882 to 1945) in the first comprehensive biography in English of the versatile economist, thinker, designer, director, socialist - and an individual now seen as a neglected genius. The book starts by exploring Neurath’s early life in Vienna where he developed his interest in the connection between economics and war, and the start of his long-running focus on social and political action. After his early studies he became a forerunner of the Vienna Circle and began travelling the Balkans to expand his understanding of how economic planning could improve people's standard of living, before himself being drafted into the First World War. His ideas around socialization garnered support, but never came to full fruition in practice. However, after the war, he and his future wife Marie Reidemeister developed the “Vienna Method of Pictorial Statistics” - later renamed Isotype - as a form of visual empowerment and a method of sharing knowledge and data with the working class. When the German Wehrmacht invaded the Netherlands in May 1940, Otto Neurath and Marie Reidemeister made an adventurous escape on a lifeboat from the port of Scheveningen to England, where they settled and lived for the rest of their lives.A pioneer in many areas, from ecological economics to information design, this book is of interest to historians of the philosophy of science, designers, economists, information graphic artists, sociologists, architectural historians and those interested in political and intellectual history.