Rose Friedman

Rose Director Friedman (December, 1910 – 18 August 2009), also known as Rose D. Friedman and Rose Director, was a free-market economist and co-founder of the Milton and Rose D. Friedman Foundation. Rose Friedman attended Reed College and later transferred to the University of Chicago where she received a Bachelor of Philosophy degree. After this she began to study for a doctorate in economics at the University of Chicago and completed all work necessary for the Ph.D. except for writing the dissertation. In her youth, she wrote articles with Dorothy Brady on consumption. She received an honorary LL.D. in December 1986 from Pepperdine University. She is believed to have been born the last week of December, 1910; however, the birth records have been lost. She was born in Staryi Chortoryisk, in Ukraine, to the Director family, prominent Jewish residents.

She was married to her frequent collaborator, Milton Friedman (1912–2006), who won the 1976 Nobel Prize in Economics. Her brother, Aaron Director (1901–2004), was a professor at the University of Chicago Law School and one of the founders of the economic analysis of law.

With Milton, she co-wrote two books on economics and public policy, Free to Choose and Tyranny of the Status Quo, and their memoirs Milton and Rose D. Friedman, Two Lucky People, which appeared in 1998. Together they founded EdChoice (formerly the Milton and Rose D. Friedman Foundation), with the aim of promoting the use of school vouchers and freedom of choice in education. She also co-produced the PBS television series, Free to Choose, and assisted her husband in writing his 1962 political philosophy book Capitalism and Freedom.

When Milton received his Medal of Freedom in 1988, President George H. W. Bush said jokingly in his speech that Rose was known for being the only person to ever have won an argument against her husband. The Friedmans have two children, Janet and David.