Lawrence H. Summers

Lawrence H. Summers is the Charles W. Eliot University Professor and President Emeritus at Harvard University. He directs the Harvard Kennedy School’s Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government. During the past four decades he has served in a series of senior policy positions, 71st Secretary of the Treasury for President Clinton, Director of the National Economic Council for President Obama and the Chief Economist of the World Bank.

Summers received a bachelor of science degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1975 and was awarded a Ph.D. from Harvard in 1982. In 1983, he became one of the youngest individuals in recent history to be named as a tenured member of the Harvard University faculty. In 1987 Mr. Summers became the first social scientist ever to receive the annual Alan T. Waterman Award of the National Science Foundation (NSF). In 1993, he was awarded the John Bates Clark Medal, given every two years to the outstanding American economist under the age of 40.

He and his wife Elisa New, Host and Director of PBS’ Poetry in America, reside in Brookline, MA and have six children.

Click here to link to Professor Summers’ personal website for additional biographical information and recent commentary.