Most of all, Isaiah Berlin was a serious scholar, probably the past century's greatest historian of ideas.

ECONOMIST: And what it says about the role of public intellectuals

The list of contributors is formidable: Isaiah Berlin, Joan Didion, Susan Sontag, Edmund Wilson, etc, etc.

ECONOMIST: Barbara Epstein, editor, died on June 16th, aged 77

One of the first and best of this modern era, Isaiah Berlin, was born 100 years ago in Riga, Latvia.

ECONOMIST: And what it says about the role of public intellectuals

The affectionate but critical description of Isaiah Berlin, a friend and colleague who both inspired and disappointed him, is particularly gripping.

ECONOMIST: Sovietology

He was supremely happy at Oxford, where his tutor was Isaiah Berlin, to whom he said he owed all his higher education.

ECONOMIST: Wynne Godley, British economist, died on May 13th, aged 83

Isaiah Berlin, an Oxford political thinker, referred to him teasingly as Christ.

ECONOMIST: John Rawls | The

Vaclav Havel, Dame Ninette de Valois, Marc Chagall, Henry Moore and Sir Isaiah Berlin are among the recipients of the past 45 years.

ECONOMIST: Obituary in brief