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1912: Milton Friedman born in Brooklyn, New York, to Jewish Hungarian immigrant parents; his father trades goods while his mother sews garments in a New York sweatshop.

1928–32: Reads mathematics at Rutgers University; meets economists Arthur Burns and Homer Jones.

1932–33: At the University of Chicago as a graduate student; influenced by economists Jacob Viner, Frank Knight and Henry Simons; meets his future wife Rose Director; graduates with a master’s degree in economics.

1929: The Wall Street crash heralds a decade of economic turmoil, the Great Depression.

1933–36: Roosevelt’s New Deal attempts to kick-start the US economy.

1933–34: Friedman studies statistics on a fellowship at Columbia University, under prominent economist and statistician Harold Hotelling.

1934–35: Works as research assistant to Henry Schulz at Chicago; meets George Stigler, who would become a lifelong friend and fellow Nobel economist.

1935: Begins work on consumer spending at the National Resources Committee in Washington; this work informs his subsequent book The Theory of the Consumption Function.

1936: Keynes’s General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money is published, introducing concepts such as the multiplier and promoting activist economic management.

1937: Assists Simon Kuznets’ work on professional incomes at the National Bureau of Economic Research; this work informs their book Income from Independent Professional Practice (see 1945).

1938: Marries Rose Director.

1940: Teaches economics at the University of Wisconsin–Madison as assistant professor.

1942–43: Wartime work on tax policy at the US Department of the Treasury; works on the withholding tax system; co-authors Taxing to Prevent Inflation; testifies on taxation and inflation in Congress – without mentioning money.

1943: Wartime work as a statistician at the Division of War Research at Columbia University, where he and colleagues at the Statistical Research Group developed the technique of sequential analysis, still used today.

The Friedmans’ daughter, Janet, is born; their son, David, is born two years later.

1945–6: Teaches at the University of Minnesota, alongside George Stigler; they collaborate on a pamphlet opposing rent controls, Roofs or Ceilings?

1945: Refines and publishes Income from Independent Professional Practice with Simon Kuznets. This work further convinces Friedman of how government regulation can be counterproductive and harmful to the public.

1946: Awarded PhD from Columbia.

Begins a 30-year teaching position in the economics department at the University of Chicago, where he is further influenced by the free-market ideas of Frank Knight and his colleagues; begins his collaboration with economic historian Anna Schwartz; works on the role of money in business cycles at the National Bureau of Economic Research, now headed by Arthur Burns.

1947: At the invitation of F. A. Hayek, Friedman attends the inaugural meeting of the Mont Pelerin Society, with his friend George Stigler and many of the world’s leading liberal scholars.

1948: Friedman’s article ‘A Monetary and Fiscal Framework’ suggests that free-market capitalism is more efficient than socialist alternatives.

1951: Gary Becker, who would subsequently win the Nobel Prize in Economic Science, enters Chicago to study economics – the first of five Nobel laureates who were taught by Friedman.

1951: The American Economic Association awards Friedman the John Bates Clark Medal, the profession’s most prestigious prize.

1953: Essays in Positive Economics argues that the goal of economics is prediction, not the refinement of mathematical models.

1954–55: Fulbright Visiting Fellow at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge.

1956: Publishes ‘The Quantity Theory of Money: A Restatement’, in Studies in the Quantity Theory of Money, edited by Friedman.

1962: Friedman publishes the bestselling Capitalism and Freedom, which argues for libertarian economic and social policies.

1962–3: Milton and Rose visit 22 countries to study different monetary and political systems.

1963: Publishes A Monetary History of the United States with Anna Schwartz.

1964: Economic advisor to the unsuccessful presidential candidate Barry Goldwater.

1965: Friedman publishes The Optimum Quantity of Money: And Other Essays, outlining his monetarist ideas.

The Friedmans build a hilltop home in Vermont, where they spend every summer and autumn.

1966–84: Writes a regular column for Newsweek magazine.

1967: Friedman becomes president of the American Economic Association, using his presidential address to introduce the idea of a ‘natural rate of unemployment’.

1968: Publishes Dollars and Deficits, on inflation, monetary policy and balance of payments problems.

Recommends flexible exchange rates to US president-elect Richard Nixon; other advice follows, but Friedman splits with Nixon over the wage and price control policy of 1971.

1970: Friedman’s Wincott Memorial Lecture The Counter-Revolution in Monetary Theory brings his ideas to the UK.

1971: Nixon allows the US dollar to float against gold and other countries, precipitating a worldwide move to free exchange rates.

1972: Publishes Price Theory, an important academic work.

Friedman has open heart surgery at the Mayo Clinic.

1975: Visits Chile, refusing to speak on official platforms but telling the military dictator, Augusto Pinochet, of the need for economic liberalisation. Pinochet brings in Chicago-trained economists, including students of Friedman, to make the economic reforms.

1976: Receives the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science for his work on consumer behaviour, monetary history and economic stabilisation policy. Published as Inflation and Unemployment, his acceptance speech rejects the idea of a trade-off between inflation and unemployment.

1977: Retires from Chicago and becomes a fellow of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, California.

1979: Prime minister Margaret Thatcher starts implementing Friedman-style monetarist policies in the UK.

1980: Friedman begins advising US president Ronald Reagan on economic policy.

Free to Choose, a book and TV series, brings Friedman’s ideas to millions of people around the world.

Friedman invited to Peking to advise China on the adoption of market-economic reforms.

1984: Publishes Tyranny of the Status Quo, noting the “iron triangle” of politicians, officials and beneficiaries that fuels the growth of government.

1988: Friedman is awarded the US Presidential Medal of Freedom.

1989: Collapse of the Berlin Wall and decline of Soviet occupation in Eastern Europe.

1992: Mart Laar becomes prime minister of Estonia and takes his economic policy straight out of Free to Choose.

1998: The Friedmans’ autobiography, Two Lucky People, is published.

2002: The Cato Institute of Washington DC inaugurates the Milton Friedman Prize for Advancing Liberty.

2006: Friedman dies on November 16 in San Francisco, aged 93. Rose Friedman dies three years later.