Sir W. Arthur Lewis: Google Doodle celebrates Saint Lucian-British economist, who won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences

Google Doodle celebrates an economist and the James Madison Professor of Political Economy at Princeton University Sir W. Arthur Lewis, who won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, on December 10, 2020.

Who was Sir W Arthur Lewis?

Sir William Arthur Lewis was born on January 23, 1915, in Castries on the Caribbean island of Saint Lucia, at that point actually part of the British Windward Islands federal colony. He was a St. Lucian economist, professor, and author. Lewis was notable for his contributions in the field of economic development and considered one of the pioneers in the field of modern development economics. He had dual Saint Lucian and British citizenship.

Sir W. Arthur Lewis was a talented student and was promoted to two classes in front of his age. In the wake of completing school at 14 years old, Lewis worked as a clerk, while waiting to take his university entrance exam. During this time he became companions with Eric Williams, the future first PM of Trinidad and Tobago, and the two stayed long-lasting friends.

After graduating, Lewis’s initial career choice was to become an engineer. He did the possible change to economics because the governments and organizations of the West Indies, for example, Saint Lucia, would not recruit blacks. Even though Lewis confronted racial discrimination, in 1932, he won a government scholarship and set out to learn at the London School of Economics, where he eventually procured a doctorate in industrial economics.

At 18 years old, Sir W. Arthur Lewis would proceed to procure a scholarship to go to the London School of Economics. Soon after, Lewis moved his concentration to world economic history and economic development. In 1954, he published his foundational article Economic Development with Unlimited Supplies of Labour.

Sir W. Arthur Lewis worked as a member of the staff at the LSE until 1948. In 1947, he wedded Gladys Jacobs, and they had two daughters together. That year he was selected as a lecturer at the University of Manchester and moved there with his family. He taught at Manchester until 1957.

Sir W. Arthur Lewis especially became known for his contributions to improvement economics, of incredible interest as previous colonies picked up independence from European countries. At the point when Ghana picked up independence in 1957, its government named Lewis as its first economic advisor. Lewis served as an economic advisor to various African and Caribbean governments, for example, Nigeria, Ghana, Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica, and Barbados.

Sir W. Arthur Lewis assisted the draw with increasing its initial Five-Year Development Plan (1959–63). In 1959 Lewis got back to the Caribbean region when designated Vice-Chancellor of the University of the West Indies. In 1963 he was knighted for his contributions to economics.

That year, Sir W Arthur Lewis was likewise designated a University Professor at Princeton University and moved to the United States. He contributed tremendously to the United Nations and shared his skill as an adviser to governments in Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean. He additionally settled and served as the first president of the Caribbean Development Bank.

Out of appreciation for his lifelong achievements, the British government knighted W Arthur Lewis in 1963.

Sir W. Arthur Lewis worked at Princeton for the next two decades, teaching generations of students until his retirement in 1983. In 1970 Lewis additionally was selected as the first president of the Caribbean Development Bank, serving in that limit until 1973.

Sir W Arthur Lewis was likewise the first Black faculty member at the London School of Economics, the first Black individual to hold a seat in a British university (at Manchester University), and the first Black professor to get a full professorship at Princeton University.

Lewis got the Nobel prize in Economics in 1979, sharing it with Theodore Schultz for his historic work to model the economic forces that affect developing countries.

Sir W. Arthur Lewis passed on 15 June 1991 in Bridgetown, Barbados. He was buried on the grounds of the Arthur Lewis Community College — named in his honor — in Saint Lucia.

Sir W. Arthur Lewis is known to be a leading figure and pioneer in developing country research. His key works from the middle of the 50s – Economic Development with Unlimited Supplies of Labour (1954), and Theory of Economic Growth (1955) – have been followed by a series of other significant works. The most significant of these are his Wicksell Lectures of 1969 (Aspects of Tropical Trade, 1883-1965), and his most recent incredible book, Growth, and Fluctuations, 1870-1913 (1978).

On December 10, 2020, Google doodle, delineated by Camilla Ru, a Manchester-based guest artist, celebrates Sir W. Arthur Lewis. The present Google Doodle is coordinated to recognize the 44th anniversary of Sir W. Arthur Lewis winning the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. The Nobel Foundation website even has a full transcript of the speech Lewis gave that day at the Nobel Banquet.

It outlines the Nobel-Prize winning scientist smiling with an enormous blackboard behind him that has outlines of a graph and the word ‘Google’ written in the standard digital-7 font.