Theodore William Schultz (; 30 April 1902 – 26 February 1998) was an American Agricultural economist and chairman of the University of Chicago Department of Economics. Schultz rose to national prominence after winning the 1979 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. Early life and education Theodore William Schultz was born on April 30, 1902 in a small town ten miles northwest of Badger, South Dakota on a 560-acre farm. When Schultz was in the eighth grade, his father Henry decided to pull him out of attending Kingsbury County Schoolhouse. His father's view was that if his eldest son continued to get an education he would be less inclined to continue working on the farm. Schultz subsequently did not have any formal post-secondary education. He eventually enrolled in the Agriculture College at South Dakota State, in a three-year program that met for four months a year during the winter. After being recognized for having great potential as a student, Schultz moved on to a bachelor's program, earning his degree in 1928 in agriculture and economics. He also received an honorary doctorate of science degree from the College in 1959. He graduated in 1927, then entered the University of Wisconsin–Madison earning his doctorate in Agricultural Economics in 1930 under Benjamin H. Hibbard with a thesis, titled The Tariff in Relation to the Coarse-Feed Grains and a Development of Some of the Theoretical Aspects of Tariff Price Research. Academic career Schultz taught at Iowa State College from 1930 to 1943. He left Iowa State in the wake of the "oleomargarine controversy", and he served as the chair of economics at the University of Chicago from 1946 to 1961. He became a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1958, the American Philosophical Society in 1962, and the United States National Academy of Sciences in 1974. He became president of the American Economic Association in 1960. He retired in 1970 though he remained active at the University of Chicago into his 90s until a fractured hip left him bedridden. Shortly after his move to Chicago, Schultz attracted his former student, D. Gale Johnson to the department. Their research in farm and agricultural economics was widely influential and attracted funding from the Rockefeller Foundation to the agricultural economics program at the University. Among the graduate students and faculty affiliated with the pair in the 1940s and 1950s were Clifford Hardin, Zvi Griliches,