Our explicit narrative of the constitution of modern economics begins with John von Neumann because I believe, with the benefit of a little additional hindsight and the provision of some previously neglected evidence, he will come to be regarded as the single most important figure in the development of economics in the twentieth century. It would initially appear I am not alone in this conviction. Roy Weintraub (1985, p. 74), suggests, “Von Neumann's [1937] paper is, in my view, the single most important article in mathematical economics.” Mohammed Dore (in Dore, Chakravarty, & Goodwin, 1989, p. 239) asserts that “John von Neumann changed the way economic analysis is being done.” Nicholas Kaldor ventured, “He was unquestionably the nearest thing to a genius I have ever encountered” (ibid., p. xi). Jurg Niehans's textbook (1990, p. 393) states flatly, “In the second quarter of the twentieth century, it happened for the first time that a mathematical genius made fundamental contributions to economic theory.” Given the spread of game theory throughout the core microeconomics curriculum since 1980, it would appear a foregone conclusion that von Neumann should be revered as the progenitor of that tradition and, thus, of microeconomic orthodoxy at the end of this century.