John Kenneth Gailbraith was an economist whose flair for writing enlivened a subject famously labeled "the dismal science." Galbraith was born Oct. 15, 1908, on a farm in Iona Station, Ont., just west of London. He attended the Ontario Agricultural College, now the University of Guelph, before moving to the United States where he earned his Ph.D from the University of California at Berkeley. He became an American citizen in 1937 and taught at Harvard and Princeton until 1942 when he began a pattern of versatility which would continue for much of his life - combining academic work with public service and prolific writing.

From 1942-49 he held a number of government jobs, returning to Harvard to become a professor of economics in 1949. As an academic he remained politically active with a strongly liberal slant. His books, laced with wit and a knack for a telling turn of phrase, made economics accessible to a more general public. His first major work, American Capitalism (1951) argued that corporate strength should be countered by stronger unions, to the benefit of society as a whole. In The Affluent Society (1958), his best known work, Gailbraith wrote in favour of more public spending, again as a balancing factor in a society in which he saw a dangerous tendency toward private, wasteful consumerism.

A key supporter and advisor to John F. Kennedy, Gailbraith served as Ambassador to India (1961-63), returning to Harvard following the Kennedy assassination. In 1967-68 he was the National Chairman of Americans for Democratic Action and in 1972 was President of the American Economic Association. He retired from Harvard in 1975, following which he wrote The Age of Uncertainty (1977), a book which in his own graceful style he gave an overview of the history of economic thought. In his book of memoirs, A Life in Our Times (1981), Gailbraith wrote of the long journey from his beginnings in rural Ontario to the occupation of a place of economic and political influence. At times, Gailbraith, with his often unfashionable liberalism, seemed like a lone voice against a rampant capitalistic chorus, but the voice was always strong, assured, eloquent and entertaining.

Galbraith died of natural causes April 29, 2006, at Mount Auburn Hospital in Cambridge, Mass., where he was admitted two weeks previously. He was 97. Galbraith was married in 1937 to Catherine Atwater. They had three sons, Alan, Peter and James.