Simon Kuznets, HON’56, HON’76, immigrated to the United States from Russia in 1922. By 1926, he had already earned his B.S., M.A. and Ph.D. from Columbia University.
It was an auspicious beginning to what would drove to be a remarkable career. Kuznets served on the staff of the National Bureau of Economic Research from the late 1920s through the 1960s and, during that time, was also a professor at Harvard (1960-1971), Johns Hopkins (1954-1960) and Wharton (1931-1954). He is shown here teaching a Wharton MBA class in 1946. Kuznets earned widespread acclaim for his contributions to the understanding and proper use of Gross National Product, a term he helped define through such works as National Income and Its Composition (1941).
He was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1971 “for his empirically founded interpretation of economic growth, which has led to new and deepened insight into the economic and social structure and process of development.” Kuznets died in 1985. He was 84.
