John Kenneth Galbraith 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.

Galbraith was born October 15, 1908, in southern Ontario, Canada, to a farming family of Scotch ancestry. He studied agricultural economics at the Ontario Agricultural College (then part of the University of Toronto; later University of Guelph) and graduated with distinction in 1931. He studied agricultural economics at the University of California, receiving his Ph.D. in 1934. In this year he also began his long, though frequently interrupted, tenure at Harvard University. Galbraith's academic career frequently gave way to public service. He worked...