Given the emphasis on quantitative reasoning at MIT, it makes perfect sense that the Economics Department here was in the vanguard of those using mathematics as a framework for organizing economic thought.
BIS Review 51/2006  1  These developments laid the foundation for economics as a discipline in the second half of the twentieth century, and the department quickly rose to the top of national rankings. Besides Samuelson, many economists contributed to the department’s outstanding reputation--Franco Modigliani, Robert Solow, Charles Kindleberger, Rudiger Dornbusch, and Stanley Fischer, to name just a few.