Bob Chitester, 83, died after a seven-year battle with cancer. A Wall Street Journal article described Bob Chitester as “the man who made Milton Friedman a star.” And it was right.

Yes, Nobel laureate Friedman would in any case have become one of the most influential economists of the 20th century. But without Chitester, he and his ideas would never have reached anywhere near as many people as they did. Friedman himself said, “I have always believed that influence is exerted much more by the written word .… My own role was persuading economists, not the public at large.” In this respect, Friedman was like most scientists, with the exception of physicists such as Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking, who were geniuses at both science and self-marketing.