deep new understanding of the reasons why some countries have become rich whereas others have remained poor (or have succumbed to poverty). In this field, Maddison was regarded as the world's most prominent scholar. Maddison's GDP reconstructions have been criticized. In the past two decades, Maddison mainly focussed on the construction of data and analysis further back in time. For example, he published an authoritative study on economic growth in China over the past twenty centuries. This study has strongly boosted the historical debate about the strengths and weaknesses of Europe and China as two of the world's leading economic forces. His estimates regarding the per capita income in the Roman Empire followed up the pioneering work of Keith Hopkins and Raymond W. Goldsmith. He was also author of many works of historical economic analysis, including The World Economy: Historical Statistics and several other reference books on the same topic. Awards, death, and legacy Until the end of his life, Maddison lived in Chevincourt, near Thourotte (France), but maintained strong connections with the University of Groningen. He was the joint founder and intellectual leader of the Groningen Growth and Development Centre, a research group within the Faculty of Economics in Groningen that focuses on long-term economic growth. The databases maintained by Maddison and his former colleagues, which now include virtually every country in the world, form one of the most important sources for the analysis of long-term economic growth and are used throughout the world by academics and policy analysts. Maddison received a royal decoration as Commander in the Netherlands Order of Orange Nassau as he turned 80, and in October 2007 Maddison received an honorary doctorate at Hitotsubashi University, Japan. Maddison died on Saturday, 24 April 2010, at the American Hospital of Paris in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France. After his death Maddison's exhaustive work quantifying global economic history has been praised as pioneering and important. See also Paul Bairoch List of regions by past GDP (PPP) per capita List of regions by past GDP (PPP) Maddison Project, a project started in March 2010 to continue the work of Maddison on historical economic statistics after his death References External links Maddison Project List of works with some links. Chinese Economic Performance in the Long Run (2007) Second edition, revised and updated, 960–2030 AD. Short biography Autobiography (1994) The World Economy dedicated website 1926 births 2010 deaths Alumni of Selwyn College, Cambridge Johns