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William Arthur Lewis was born in Saint Lucia on 23rd January, 1923. His mental capabilities were way beyond his years and at the age of fourteen years he graduated from St. Mary's College and obtained work as a Clerk with the Civil service. In 1932, hoping to pursue study in engineering he proceeded to the United Kingdom on scholarship. To his disillusionment he realized that the area of study he had set his heart on was closed to Blacks because of racial discrimination. Undeterred he opted to tackle the field of Economics, an area which was new to him, but which eventually enabled him to scale the heights of intellectual excellence and gain international eminence in that area.
Sir William Arthur Lewis was a pioneer in the field of development economics and a leading authority on economic growth. His works demonstrate an interest in varied yet integrated strands in economics and policy-making ranging from an interest in economic planning in industrialized countries to an interest in economic development of developing countries and an interest in the international trading system. In 1979, he became the first Black man to be awarded an academic Nobel Prize (Economics) for his analysis of not only economic growth but also the structural transformation of the economies of Asia, Africa, the Caribbean and Latin America. This was a great honour not only for Saint Lucia but the entire Caribbean. His construction of an innovative economic model which fused his understanding of economic history with an analysis of the forms of economic organization of the colonial economies produced a sweeping model for future economic development in what today we call the Developing World (Third World).
Sir Arthur was the founding President of the Caribbean Development Bank and served from 1970 - 1973. He was also the author of several classic publications the more well-known being "The Theory of Economic Growth" and "The Agony of the Eight". Among his notable achievements, he served as the United Nations Economic Advisor to the Prime Minister of Ghana, Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, as the Deputy Managing Director of the United Nations Special Fund, and also as the Vice Chancellor and later on the President of the University of the West Indies.
It should be noted that in that colonial era (circa 1940s), it was very unusual for Blacks to have achieved this level of academic performance, especially in the field of Economics. In addition, he was the first Black person to hold the position of Stanley Jevons Professor of Political Economy at the University of Manchester (United Kingdom) in 1948. This achievement was certainly a step towards breaking racial barriers
Though Sir Arthur Lewis departed this life in June 1991, his genius can still be recognized when one reads any of the articles or books that he has written.
The Sir William Arthur Lewis’ papers were inscribed on the International Memory of the World in May 2009. |
