Diplomats, leaders, reformers, and the institutions they shaped.
David Ricardo argued that Britain’s Corn Laws made bread dearer and held back growth. After his death Parliament repealed them in 1846 and free trade became policy.
Read the full story →David Ricardo used his seat in Parliament to support parliamentary reform and the secret ballot, speaking for reform at a Westminster dinner in 1822.
Read the full story →In his Plan for the Establishment of a National Bank, published in 1824, David Ricardo argued that money should be issued by an independent public body.
Read the full story →J. D. Salinger served with the US 4th Infantry Division, landing at Utah Beach on D-Day and fighting in the Hürtgen Forest and the Battle of the Bulge.
Read the full story →In 2008 Joseph Stiglitz chaired the Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress, whose 2009 report argued that GDP alone does not measure well-being.
Read the full story →After the war Leo Szilard lobbied for changes to the Atomic Energy Act of 1946 that placed American nuclear energy under civilian rather than military control.
Read the full story →Louis Brandeis urged Woodrow Wilson to give the government real power to enforce antitrust law and became one of the architects of the Federal Trade Commission.
Read the full story →In 1955 Max Born and Otto Hahn initiated the Mainau Declaration, in which Nobel laureates warned against nuclear weapons; within a year 52 laureates had signed.
Read the full story →As mayor, Michael Bloomberg increased funding for affordable housing through a plan that created and preserved an estimated 160,000 affordable homes in New York.
Read the full story →Through the Mayors Challenge and the Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Initiative, Michael Bloomberg has rewarded city innovation and trained hundreds of mayors.
Read the full story →In 2003 Mayor Michael Bloomberg banned smoking in all New York City indoor workplaces, including bars and restaurants, and many cities and states followed.
Read the full story →In June 1950 Niels Bohr sent an open letter to the United Nations calling for international cooperation and openness on nuclear energy to prevent an arms race.
Read the full story →At 18 Robert Solow left Harvard to join the US Army, serving in North Africa, Sicily and Italy intercepting German radio messages from trucks near the front.
Read the full story →From 1907 Rose Schneiderman argued that working women needed the vote to win better conditions, helping widen the suffrage movement beyond the middle class.
Read the full story →In 1912 Rose Schneiderman travelled through Ohio's industrial cities for the National American Woman Suffrage Association, urging working men to vote for women's suffrage.
Read the full story →In 1917 Rose Schneiderman led the industrial section of New York's suffrage campaign, and the state referendum that year gave New York's women full voting rights.
Read the full story →After World War II, Simon Kuznets advised the governments of China, Japan, India, Korea, Taiwan and Israel on setting up their national systems of economic information.
Read the full story →Steven Weinberg advised the US Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, wrote Glory and Terror on the nuclear danger, and served on the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists' Board of Sponsors from 2009.
Read the full story →“A friend is devoted at all times; a brother is born to share adversity.”