John Kenneth Galbraith died Saturday night at the age of 97 in Cambridge, MA. The NY Times’ lengthy story on Galbraith’s remarkable life is here and the well-done Boston Globe story on Galbraith’s life is here.
Although Galbraith won world-wide recognition throughout his life as a liberal economist, a consultant to presidents, an active ambassador and a prodigious and witty author regarding America’s affluence, my sense is that his foremost legacy is as a wonderful teacher. During his long and distinguished career at Harvard, his lectures were among the most well-attended of any professor, prompting Harvard colleague Henry Rosovsky to pass along the now well-known anecdote that even his car mechanic had heard about Galbraith’s formidable teaching talent. Galbraith’s death comes about a year after the publication of Richard Parker’s seminal book about his life, John Kenneth Galbraith: His Life, His Politics, His Economics (Farrar, Straus 2005), reviewed here by Robert Skidelsky.
As noted in this earlier post, Parker in his book notes how the late President Lyndon Baines Johnson‘s rejection of one of Galbraith’s speeches prompted the following hilarious observation from LBJ about economics and economists:

“Did yíever think, Ken, that making a speech on ee-co-nomics is a lot like pissing down your leg? It seems hot to you, but it never does to anyone else.”