Elinor Claire "Lin" Ostrom (née Awan; August 7, 1933 – June 12, 2012) was an American political economist. She won the Nobel Prize 2009 in Economic Sciences which she shared with Oliver Williamson. Ostrom became the first woman to win a Nobel Prize in this category. Her worked said that the idea of the Tragedy of the Commons was too simple. Some communities do share common resources in a positive way and do not waste or destroy them.

Ostrom was one of 20 Nobel Laureates^[1] who signed the "Stockholm memorandum" at the 3rd Nobel Laureate Symposium on Global Sustainability in Stockholm, Sweden on 18 May 2011.^[2]

Ostrom taught at both Indiana University and Arizona State University. She was born in Los Angeles, California.^[3] She was married to political scientist Vincent Ostrom (born 1919) from 1963 until she died. She was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in October 2011 and died of the disease^[3] in Bloomington, Indiana at age 78.^[4]

1. ↑ Such as Peter Agre, Nadine Gordimer, Yuan T. Lee, Werner Arber, David Gross, James Mirrlees, Carlo Rubbia, Paul J. Crutzen, Mario J. Molina, Amartya Sen, Peter Doherty (scientist), Walter Kohn, Douglass North, John Sulston, Murray Gell-Mann, Harold Kroto, Douglas Osheroff, Muhammad Yunus
2. ↑ "Stockholm Memorandum," Archived 2016-03-03 at the Wayback Machine Nobel-cause.de, 2011
3. ↑ ^{3.0 3.1} Guardian obituary
4. ↑ Telegraph obituary

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