Nobel Laureate in Economics, 1992

Gary Stanley Becker was born in 1930 in Pottsville, Pennsylvania. He studied economics at Princeton University and the University of Chicago, where he received his Ph.D. degree in 1955. His doctoral dissertation, written under the supervision of Milton Friedman, became the book The Economics of Discrimination in 1957 and a second edition was published in 1971. The work starts by asking how much people are willing to give up to avoid interaction with others, with the implication that public policy can discourage discrimination by raising the price of it.

Gary Becker later turned his attention to "the economics of education", and the title of his 1964 book Human Capital has now entered the lexicon of the Clinton Administration, although Becker has described himself as a "free-market person" who believes that "individuals responding to incentives can do very well". His other studies have addressed questions in criminology, demographic policies, changes within the family and the various forms of addiction.

From 1954 to 1957 he taught as an Assistant Professor at the University of Chicago. He subsequently moved to Columbia University before returning to the University of Chicago in 1969, where he is currently Professor of Economics and Sociology.

In 1992 he received the Nobel Prize for Economics for "having extended the domain of economic theory to disciplines such as sociology, demography and criminology" and for showing that rational economic incentives influence decision making in "areas where researchers formerly assumed that behaviour is habitual and often downright irrational".

He is the author of numerous books and was awarded several international prizes. Among many other positions, he has been President and Vice-President of the American Economic Association and is an associate member of the Institute of Fiscal and Monetary Policy of the Ministry of Finance in Japan. He has also been writing a column for "Business Week" since 1985.

In 1998, Becker is among the founders of UNext.com, the Internet education company created in cooperation with the leading knowledge institutions in the US. He is presently a member of the Board of Directors. The first learning community established by Unext.com is the Cardean University, which offers courses to individuals as well as corporations and their employees around the world. It will be a lifelong resource for all those interested in career advancement, updating job skills, or pursuing an M.B.A. degree.