Among the most masterful and insightful of 20th Century economists, Friedrich A. von Hayek [1899–1992] alone could have stood shoulder-to-shoulder with his great rival, J. M. Keynes. Trained by Wieser and Böhm-Bawerk in the Austrian tradition at Vienna, F.A. Hayek nonetheless carved a distinct spot in the economic pantheon—in some ways more different from the Austrian School than that of his friend and intellectual companion, Ludwig von Mises....

...Hayek presented his main treatise on monetary cycle theory in a slim book, Prices and Production (1931), in England and was immediately drafted by Lord Robbins to join the L.S.E. [London School of Economics]—where he would serve as that institution's answer to Cambridge's John Maynard Keynes who was then working on similar issues....

At the L.S.E., Hayek was instrumental in furthering its then-novel "continental" bent and he was highly influential on his junior colleagues...and students...However, following the appearance of the General Theory by J. M. Keynes in 1936...the economics profession [was] drawn away from Hayek's orbit. [His student Nicholas] Kaldor's departure was particularly stinging—since his subsequent criticisms of the "Ricardo Effect" upon which Hayek was hanging the remnants of a shredded cycle theory, led Hayek to abandon his cycle theory entirely.

Hayek's attempted to work a new system in his Pure Theory of Capital (1941), which he originally envisioned as a part of a larger work.  In it, he attempted to develop a joint theory of investment and capital. Inexplicably, his 1941 book fell dead-born from the press and proved to be his last substantial effort in the area of theoretical Neoclassical economics. Nonetheless, many of the Hayekian capital themes would emerge later in the theory of investment by his students...

...Hayek turned in 1944 to the political arena with his Road to Serfdom, a polemical defense of laissez-faire—the work for which he is best known outside academia. His subsequent political activities include the foundation of the libertarian "Mont Pelerin Society" in the 1940s....

...After spending many fruitful years at the L.S.E., Hayek joined the Committee on Social Thought (not the economics department) of the University of Chicago in 1950. [In 1960, he published The Constitution of Liberty.] In 1962, Hayek left for the University of Freiburg in Germany and subsequently Salzburg, where he spent his remaining years. Hayek shared the Nobel Prize with Gunnar Myrdal in 1974 in one of the more controversial and surprising awards ever made (controversial because Myrdal had called for the abolition of the Nobel prize as a result of it having been awarded to Hayek and [Milton] Friedman, and surprising for, at that time, Hayek was virtually forgotten in the economics profession). Interest in Hayek and his work increased after the 1974 award...and has kept on that track until today—his stock being enormously boosted by the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe." (from The History of Economic Thought Website at the Center for Economic Policy Analysis at the New School)