Kenneth Ewart Boulding American economist, educator, poet, philosopher, sociologist Date of Birth: 18.01.1910 Country: Great Britain

Biography of Kenneth Ewart Boulding

Kenneth Ewart Boulding was an American economist, educator, poet, philosopher, sociologist, and religious mystic. He actively supported movements fighting for peace and was one of the creators of the general systems theory. Boulding was born on January 18, 1910 in Liverpool, England, into a working-class family. His father and grandfather were Methodist preachers who traveled to small Methodist churches several times a year. Boulding was the first in his family to receive an education beyond elementary school. He attended the Liverpool Collegiate School on a scholarship and later studied at New College, Oxford, where he graduated with honors in politics, philosophy, and economics.

Unable to secure a teaching position at Oxford due to class prejudices, Boulding went to the United States as part of the Commonwealth Scholarship and Fellowship Plan. He studied at the University of Chicago under Frank Knight and Henry Schulz, and later at Harvard University under Joseph Schumpeter. In 1934, Boulding returned to the United Kingdom and began teaching at the University of Edinburgh. In 1937, he started his long and illustrious professorial career at Colgate University in the United States and subsequently taught at McGill University, Iowa State University, and the University of Michigan from 1947 to 1969. Boulding obtained American citizenship in 1948. From 1967, he was a member of the faculty at the University of Colorado at Boulder, where he retired as a distinguished professor of economics.

Boulding also held positions as president of the American Economics Association, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Society for the Advancement of General Systems Theory, and the International Studies Association. He published over a thousand works, primarily articles, covering thirty different fields of study, ranging from environmental issues, agriculture, labor, ethics, and religion to conflict resolution through peace or war. However, his four books, "Economic Analysis" (1941), "A Reconstruction of Economics" (1950), "The Image" (1956), and "Ecodynamics" (1978) are considered his seminal works. Boulding was not only a prolific writer and generator of new ideas but also an academic scholar with a global reputation, perhaps one of the most influential figures in the field of social sciences. According to Boulding, economics and sociology were not separate social sciences but rather aspects of a unified social science dedicated to studying people, their relationships, and organizations - a truly revolutionary approach to economics.

Alongside his wife, Elise M. Boulding, who was a well-known Quaker sociologist, Kenneth Boulding was an active member of the Quaker religious community. He participated in meetings throughout the country and fulfilled the role of a priest. Boulding passed away on March 18, 1993, at the age of 83.