Rostow, Walt Whitman 1916-
US economist

Born in New York City and a graduate of Yale, he was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford (1936-38). After serving with the US army as a major (1942-45), he was assistant chief of the German-Austrian Economic Division of the State Department until becoming Harmsworth Professor of History at Oxford and then Professor of American History at Cambridge until 1950. He worked at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Center for International Studies (1950-60), and became special adviser to Presidents John F Kennedy (1961-63) and Lyndon B Johnson (1966-69). Since 1969 he has been Professor of Economics and History at Texas University. He has published many books, particularly relating to questions of economic growth, and is best known for his theory that societies pass through five stages of economic growth. His publications include The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto (1960), Politics and the Stages of Growth (1971), Rich Countries and Poor Countries (1987) and Theories of Economic Growth (1990).