Rostow, Walt W

American economist, assistant to presidents Kennedy and Johnson for national security affairs.

Walt W. Rostow has spent his career, since completing his Ph.D. at Yale in 1940, moving between academic and government positions. He began his career in the economics department of Columbia University, but he served with the State Department in European recovery efforts following the war. Throughout the 1950s he was a professor of economic history at MIT. In 1961 he returned to Washington as an assistant to the president for national security affairs and served in that and other similar capacities throughout the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. Thereafter he accepted an academic post with the University of Texas.