John Kenneth Galbraith (1908-2006) was a Canadian-born American economist, public servant, and writer. Born in Iona Station, Ontario, he earned a B.Sc. degree (1931) from the Ontario Agricultural College at Guelph and M.Sc (1933) and a Ph.D. degree (1934) from the University of California, Berkeley, and later studied in England at Cambridge University. He became a U.S. citizen in 1937 and would serve in Roosevelt, Truman, Kennedy, and Johnson administrations. He was also Paul M. Warburg Professor of Economics at Harvard University, where he taught for many years, a U.S. ambassador to India (1963-63), and the author of many books of economics, including American Capitalism, The Great Crash, 1929, The Affluent Society, The New Industrial State, and Economics and the Public Purpose, as well as hundreds of essays, a memoir, and a number of novels. He was awarded numerous honorary degrees, twice received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, in 1946 and 2000, and was made an officer of the Order of Canada in 1997.
