LONDON, CMC – The London School of Economics (LSE) has renamed its Economics building after St. Lucian Nobel Laureate Sir William Arthur Lewis, the LSE’s first black academic and the United Kingdom’s first black professor.
A statement issued by the St. Lucian High Commission said that in recognition of Lewis’s many achievements, “LSE Council renamed 32 Lincolnis Inn Fields, which houses the Department of Economics and associated research centers, in his honor”.
Sir Arthur won a government scholarship to study in Britain in 1933 and gained a First Class Bachelor of Commerce degree at LSE. He subsequently obtained a scholarship to continue his studies at LSE with a Ph.D. in Industrial Economics.
Sir Arthur was a faculty member of LSE from 1938 to 1948 and became a School Reader in Colonial Economics in 1947. Sir Arthur was awarded the Nobel Prize for Economics in 1979 for “pioneering research into economic development research with particular consideration of the problems of developing countries.”
St. Lucia’s High Commissioner to the United Kingdom, Anthony Severin, present at the unveiling, congratulated the LSE for its decision to name the building after Sir Arthur, whom he called “a treasured son of the Saint Lucian soil.”
He also expressed gratitude to the LSE on behalf of the people of St. Lucia for taking “the tangible step toward preserving the memory and legacy of Sir Arthur Lewis and for bringing honor to his family and the land of his birth.”
Sir Arthur was a scholar and economic advisor to many international commissions and several African, Asian, and Caribbean governments..”
He published 1954 what was to be his most influential development economics article, “Economic Development with Unlimited Supplies of Labour,” introducing what came to be called the Two-Tier Dual Sector model, or the “Lewis Model.”
Sir Arthur died on June 15, 1991, in Barbados and was buried on the grounds of Sir Arthur Lewis Community College in St Lucia. He was 76.
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