Hoover Institution Senior Research Fellow Milton Friedman, one of the most influential thinkers in generations, died yesterday at his home in San Francisco.

The 94-year-old Nobel laureate legend was remembered around campus and the world for his substantial impact on the global economy and his contributions to the field of economics.

“He’s left a deep imprint on economics and public policy, more so than any other person in the 20th century,” said Economics Prof. Michael Boskin, a friend of Friedman and the former chairman of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers. “He was passionately committed to freedom, liberty and choice for their own sake and for their consequences. He was a great guy, a great human being, as well as a great economist.”

Friedman’s longevity resulted in an intellectual and political influence spanning six decades, from his controversial role during World War II formulating and implementing tax withholding to his last paper, which concerned the Taylor rule, a guideline for the Federal Reserve’s policies.

“It was his dynamic view of the economy that influenced me and others. He emphasized the decisions made by individuals, and stressed the economic freedom concept,” said Economics Prof. John Taylor, for whom the above rule is named. “I attribute the last 25 years of economic growth to his influence.”

Friedman favored a policy of steady, moderate growth in the money supply, opposed wage and price controls and criticized the Federal Reserve when it tried to fine-tune the economy. His work in consumption analysis, monetary history and stabilization policy earned him the Nobel Prize in economics in 1976.

Friedman influenced not only economics and public policy, but millions of students who read his libertarian treatises. Senior Ray Seilie said that Friedman’s Capitalism and Freedom is one of his favorite books.

“Too many discussions in politics end up getting polarized into either ideological or societal welfare camps,” Seilie said. “What I particularly liked was his ability to synthesize the abstract principles of liberty with the beneficial social effects of relying on individual choice rather than government imposition.”

Friedman’s impact extended beyond the Hoover Tower. He is credited as the brain trust behind Reaganomics, the supply-side economic theory that grew the economy through the 1980s. Besides playing prominent roles in the Nixon and Ford administrations, he inspired revolutionaries and reformers around the globe.

Boskin recalled Friedman’s tremendous influence.

A group of economists in Soviet Russia had a contraband copy of Friedman’s classic Capitalism and Freedom, and they would go upstairs at night and read it by candlelight so as not to get caught.

One of the men was Vaclav Klaus, now the president of the Czech Republic.

“[Klaus] said it was this that made them realize that they had to do something about Communism,” Boskin said.

Robert Leeson, a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution who is publishing Friedman’s collected writings, said that Friedman’s personality and his success were deeply intertwined.

“Anyone who ever wrote him, from a seven-year-old child to a Nobel laureate, he would write back,” he said. “He was a compulsive educator, but he wasn’t boring, pompous, or didactic. Milton was on a lifelong mission to assist people on their educational path.”

Friedman graduated from Rutgers University in 1932 and earned his master’s degree the following year at the University of Chicago. After World War II, he taught at the University of Minnesota, then returned to the University of Chicago. He became a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University in 1977.

Colleagues noted that being on the opposite side of an issue from the affable Friedman was an unenviable position — at least from an intellectual standpoint.

“If you were opposed to him in a debate, and you happened to get him to concede there was a grain of truth in what you were saying,” said Boskin, “you thought it was a great victory, because it was so rare.”

Friedman married Rose Director in 1938. They had two children, Janet and David, and Rose was co-author of some of his books.

Boskin remembered Friedman on the dance floor at his wife’s birthday party last year.

“He and Rose were not only easy to admire and respect, but easy to love,” said Boskin. “They were tremendously principled and decent — and fun.”

In fact, the Friedmans were scheduled to leave for a cruise this week.

— The Associated Press contributed to this report.