John Kenneth Galbraith; Popularized Modern Economics

He was no less caustic about his own profession.

"Economists," he once said, "are most economical about ideas. They make the ones they learned in graduate school last a lifetime." An agricultural economist early in his career, he would describe himself as "without rival as the nation's first expert on the price of hogs." And although he rated himself as "barely average" as a professor, his Harvard lectures routinely drew standing-room-only audiences.

Despite periodic self-deprecation, Dr. Galbraith was widely said to have been arrogant and was described as such in a 1961 profile in the New York Times. When he complained to President Kennedy, "I didn't see why they had to call me arrogant," the president answered: "I don't see why not. Everybody else does."

At 6 feet 8 inches tall, it was often said of him -- as it was of French leader Charles de Gaulle -- that it was difficult for a tall man to avoid looking down on others. A framed needlepoint in his Cambridge home near Harvard Yard proclaimed, "Galbraith's First Law: Modesty is a Vastly Overrated Virtue."

Long overlooked for a Nobel Prize, he received from Clinton in 2000 the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the U.S. government's highest civilian honor.

"With clarity, wit and a keen social conscience, he has made complex economic theories and processes comprehensible to a wide audience and highlighted the social and ethical impacts of economic policies," the award citation said. "A tireless reformer of the free enterprise system, he has resolutely promoted social justice and challenged conventional assumptions in his Harvard classroom and in the public arena."

Father's Inspiration

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John Kenneth Galbraith was born Oct. 15, 1908, on a small farm near Iona Station in Ontario, Canada.

From his father, a leading figure in the local branch of the Canadian Liberal Party, he inherited his politics, his wit and his height. As a child he accompanied his father to political rallies. At one such gathering, the elder Galbraith climbed atop a pile of manure to address the crowd. "He apologized with ill-concealed sincerity for speaking from the Tory platform," Dr. Galbraith later remembered.

"I congratulated him on the brilliance of the sally. He said, 'It was good, but it didn't change any votes.' "

He studied animal husbandry at Ontario Agricultural College at Guelph and later received a doctorate in agricultural economics at the University of California at Berkeley.

In 1934, Dr. Galbraith joined the Harvard faculty, where he would serve with several interruptions until he retired in 1975. He became a U.S. citizen in 1937, then left the country on a year-long sabbatical as a research fellow at Cambridge University in England, where he became a disciple of Keynesian economics.