Bio of Lawrence Summers
Biographical information on Lawrence Summers
Lawrence Summers, considered the leading candidate to succeed Ben Bernanke as Federal Reserve chairman, on Sunday withdrew from consideration for the role.
AGE — 58.
OCCUPATION — Economist; Charles W. Eliot University Professor at Harvard University.
EDUCATION — Massachusetts Institute of Technology, bachelor's degree, 1975; Harvard University, Ph.D., 1982.
EXPERIENCE — Served as Treasury secretary under President Bill Clinton. Forged a bond with President Barack Obama as head of his National Economic Council in 2009 and 2010. In that time, he oversaw the administration's response to the economic and financial crisis and to the bailout of the U.S. auto industry.
After his White House tenure, he worked as a paid consultant for financial institutions such as Citibank. He then returned to Harvard, where he once served as president of the university, to teach. Summers first joined Harvard's faculty in 1983 at age 28, making him one of the university's youngest tenured professors ever.
Summers has also served as chief economist for the World Bank.
PERSONAL — Summers was born to a family of economists. Two of his uncles — Paul Samuelson and Kenneth Arrow — were Nobel Prize laureates in economics.
