Gunnar Myrdal

Karl Gunnar Myrdal was born on December 6, 1898, in Skattungbyn, Dalarna. Educated in law and economics at Stockholm University, he was a leading member of the Stockholm School of economics alongside Knut Wicksell.

Commissioned by the Carnegie Corporation in 1938, Myrdal directed an encyclopedic, groundbreaking study of race relations in the United States, publishing An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy (1944). The study demonstrated that American racism was a moral conflict between egalitarian ideals and institutional discrimination, cited decisively by the US Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education (1954). Serving as Executive Secretary of the UN Economic Commission for Europe and author of Asian Drama, he was awarded the 1974 Nobel Prize in Economics.