Finding Aids Template - John F. Kennedy Library and Museum

The Personal Papers of John Kenneth Galbraith (1908-2006)
Biographical Note
John Kenneth Galbraith, a diplomat, scholar and economist, was born October 15, 1908, in Iona
Station, Ontario, the son of William Archibald (a politician and farmer) and Catherine Kendall. He
served as an advisor in both the United States and Canadian governments from the 1930s onward.
He studied agricultural economics at the Ontario Agricultural College (then part of the University of
Toronto; now, the University of Guelph) and graduated with distinction in 1931. He went on to
study agricultural economics at the University of California, receiving his Ph.D. in 1934 after
submitting a dissertation on public expenditures in California counties. In this year he also began
his long, though frequently interrupted, tenure at Harvard University, where he became an emeritus
professor. He became a U.S. citizen in 1937 and in the same year married Catherine Atwater. They
had four sons, Alan, Peter, James and Douglas.
Galbraith's academic career frequently gave way to public service. He worked in the Department of
Agriculture during the New Deal, and during World War II as the deputy administrator in the Office
of Price Administration and Civilian Supply. From his wartime work emerged a monograph, The
Theory of Price Control (1952).
After the end of the war in Europe, Galbraith worked with the Office of Strategic Services directing
research on the effectiveness of the Allies' strategic bombing of Germany. In 1947 he was one of
the founders of the Americans for Democratic Action. After working as a speechwriter in the
presidential campaigns of Senator Adlai Stevenson, Galbraith went on to chair the Democratic
Advisory Council during Dwight D. Eisenhower's Republican administration. In 1956 he visited
India where his fascination with the country inspired some of his later works. Galbraith was a close
friend and early supporter of John F. Kennedy and after Kennedy's victory in the presidential
election of 1960 Galbraith was named U.S. ambassador to India, serving from 1961 to 1963. An
outspoken critic of U.S. involvement in Vietnam, he campaigned on behalf of the presidential
ambitions of Senators Eugene McCarthy (1968) and George McGovern (1972). Later he worked in
the campaigns of Congressman Morris Udall (1976) and Senator Edward Kennedy (1980). Though
he eventually broke with President Lyndon B. Johnson over the war in Vietnam, he helped conceive
Johnson's ‗Great Society‘ program and wrote a major presidential address that outlined its purposes.
A writer whose books cover a wide variety of topics, Galbraith's major intellectual contributions lie
in the trilogy The Affluent Society (1958), The New Industrial State (1967), and Economics and the
Public Purpose (1973). He published over 20 additional books, including two novels, a co-authored
book on Indian painting, memoirs, travelogues, political tracts, and several publications on
economic and intellectual history. He also collaborated on and narrated a Public Broadcasting
System television series, "The Age of Uncertainty."
John Kenneth Galbraith died of natural causes at the age of 97 on April 29, 2006.
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