John Maynard Keynes

1883-1946

Economist, Unconventional Thinker

John Maynard Keynes dared to be be openly gay at a time when it wasn't acceptable to be out. But he did everything differently. In his forties, he fell in love and got married -- to a woman.

Keynes was obviously anything but conventional. In his fifties, he rejected many of his previously held economic theories and started over. During World War I, he supported his country by working on the team that negotiated peace -- even though he didn't support the war in the first place.

He was the first child of an upper middle-class family. His mother, Florence, became Cambridge, England's first female mayor in 1932. At the centuries-old Eton, the private school he attended as a teen, Keynes first explored his sexuality with two boys who became his lifelong friends.

Keynes -- who was a member of the Bloomsbury group, a collection of thinkers that included Virginia Woolf and E. M. Forster -- created the economic theories which guided the U. S. until the 1980s. He is often regarded as the most influential economist of the first half of the century.

Keynes' book A Treatise on Money was intended to sum up his life's work, but at age 50, Keynes published The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money that rewrote his views of the economy. Many economists were critical of the new work, but some younger economists received it more warmly.

Exactly what it was that Keynes changed his mind about are economic theories that are hard for most to understand and almost impossible for me to explain. The point, though, is that Keynes was not afraid to turn his life in a new direction.

While it is never a good idea to weakly waiver in conviction, it is always good to admit wrong and begin anew.