Edmund S. Phelps, the 2006 Nobel Laureate in Economics, is the Founding Director of the Center on Capitalism and Society. He was born in 1933 near Chicago, received his B.A. from Amherst in 1955 and his Ph.D. from Yale in 1959. After appointments at Yale and Penn he joined Columbia in 1971. In 2008 he was named Chevalier of the Legion of Honor, received the Premio Pico della Mirandola, the Kiel Global Economy Prize, and was honored by establishment of the Phelps Chair at the Universidad de Buenos Aires, which two years later, also instituted the Phelps medal for innovation and inclusion. In 2010 Phelps was appointed Dean of the New Huadu Business School and named to the Advisory Board of the New York Forum. In 2011 he became director of the New Huadu Economics and Management Institute in Beijing, was given the Louise Blouin Award for Creative Leadership, and appointed Full Foreign Member of the Russian Academy of Science. He has received many honorary degrees, the latest being a doctorate degree from the Université Libre de Bruxelles in June 2010.