Background
He was born on July 27, 1904, in Tomaszow, Poland. His ancestors had emigrated at the beginning of the 19th century from Germany to Poland.
He was born on July 27, 1904, in Tomaszow, Poland. His ancestors had emigrated at the beginning of the 19th century from Germany to Poland.
He studied at the University of Posen, at the London School of Economics, and at the University of Cracow, where, in 1931.
Lange came to the United States in 1934 to study at Harvard University and the University of Minnesota.
In 1931 he lectured on economics and statistics at University of Cracow. From 1936 he taught economics at the University of Michigan, the University of California, Stanford University, and the the University of Chicago. Because he was a leading member of the Polish Socialist Party, Lange's criticism of the anti-Soviet members of the Polish government-in-exile and his suggestions for a postwar Polish program in which he stressed close understanding with the Soviet Union gained him an invitation from Joseph Stalin to visit the Soviet Union, a visit he made in 1944.
In 1945 Lange relinquished his American citizenship, which he had been granted in 1943, to become Polish ambassador to the United States (December 1945 - December 1946). He was Polish representative to the UN Security Council from 1946 to 1948. He then became a professor of economics at Warsaw University, the chairman of the economic council of the council of ministers, and a member of the central committee of the Polish United Workers Party. In the national elections of Jan. 20, 1957, he was elected a deputy to the Sejm (parliament), and on Feb. 20, 1957, he became a vice-president of the council of state. Lange's most influential book, On the Economic Theory of Socialism (1939--co-author, Fred M. Taylor), is a brilliant demonstration that market-based prices are indispensable to the rational functioning of any socialist economy.
Lange served as a go-between for Roosevelt and Stalin during the Yalta Conference discussions on post-war Poland.
Despite being an ardent socialist, Lange deplored the Marxian labor theory of value because he was very much a believer in the neoclassical theory of price.
He married Irene Oderfeld in 1932.