21st century capitalism robert heilbroner biography

American economist (1919–2005)

Robert L. Heilbroner (March 24, 1919 – January 4, 2005) was an American economist and historian of economic thought.

The author of some two dozen books, Heilbroner was best known for The Worldly Philosophers: The Lives, Times and Ideas of the Great Economic Thinkers (1953), a survey of the lives and contributions of famous economists, notably Adam Smith, Karl Marx, and John Maynard Keynes.

Early life and education

Heilbroner was born in 1919, in New York City, to a wealthy German Jewish family. His father, Louis Heilbroner, was a businessman who founded the men's clothing retailer Weber & Heilbroner.^[2] Robert graduated from Harvard University in 1940 with a summa cum laude degree in philosophy, government and economics.

During World War II, he served in the United States Army and worked at the Office of Price Control under John Kenneth Galbraith, the highly celebrated and controversial Institutionalist ec