John Kenneth Galbraith (born 1908) was a leading scholar of the American Institutionalist school and arguably the most famous economist in the post World War II world. His views were a stinging indictment of the modern materialistic society that championed personal achievement and material well-being over public interest and needs. In spite of these views, he served as an advisor in both the American and Canadian governments from the 1930s onward.

John Kenneth Galbraith was born on October 15, 1908 in southern Ontario, Canada, on the shores of Lake Erie to a farming family of Scotch ancestry. He studied agricultural economics at the Ontario Agricultural College (then part of the University of Toronto; now, the University of Guelph) and graduated with distinction in 1931. He went on to study agricultural economics at the University of California, receiving his Ph.D. in 1934 after submitting a dissertation on public expenditures in California counties. In...