American business executive and federal government official William McChesney Martin, Jr. (1906-1998) directed major financial institutions and had a prominent role in shaping national economic policy in the 1950s and 1960s.

William McChesney Martin Jr., the elder of two sons of Rebecca Woods Martin and William McChesney Martin, was born December 17, 1906, in St. Louis, Missouri. His father, a lawyer and banker, was chief executive officer of the St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank, one of 12 regional banks in the Federal Reserve System, from 1914 to 1941.

Bill Martin was influenced by his father and by his family's strict Presbyterian tenets. Discipline, study, and athletics were stressed. He was interested in economics and finance, but his father advised him to study liberal arts in college. After graduating from private and public schools in St. Louis, he attended Yale University and received a B.A. in English in 1928.

Martin first worked in the...