W. Arthur Lewis was the first in many distinctions: the first Black faculty member at the London School of Economics, the first Black person to hold a chair in a British university and the first Black instructor to receive full professorship at Princeton University.
Lewis, who nabbed a Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics on this day in 1979 for his work to modeling how economic forces affect developing countries, is the subject of Thursday's Google Doodle.
"Among many valuable accomplishments, Lewis contributed influential work to the United Nations and shared his expertise as an adviser to governments in Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean," Google's post on Lewis states.
Born in 1915 in the Caribbean nation of Saint Lucia, he reached full professor status by 33. In 1963, the British government knighted him. He died in 1991.
