Gunnar Myrdal

Karl Gunnar Myrdal (6 December 1898 – 17 May 1987) was a Swedish Nobel Laureate economist, sociologist, and politician. He is best known in the United States for his study of race relations, which culminated in his book The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy. The study was influential in the 1954 landmark U.S. Supreme Court Decision Brown v. the Board of Education. In 1974, he received the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences with Friedrich Hayek for "their pioneering work in the theory of money and economic fluctuations and for their penetrating analysis of the interdependence of economic, social and institutional phenomena."

Biography

Childhood

Myrdal was born on 6 December 1898 in Gustafs, Sweden, to Karl Adolf Pettersson (1876–1934), a railroad employee, and his wife Anna Sofia Karlsson (1878–1965). He took the name Myrdal in 1914.

Education and early career

There is a possibly apocryphal story about an interaction between him and Gustav Cassel, where Cassel was reported to say, "Gunnar, you should be more respectful to your elders, because it is we who will determine your promotion," and he replied, "Yes, but it is we who will write your obituaries."

Gunnar Myrdal graduated with a law degree from Stockholm University in 1923 and a doctorate in economics in 1927. In 1919, he met Alva Reimer, which he married in 1924.<ref name="(Karl) Gunnar...
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