Thomas Sowell
American economist, social theorist, political philosopher and author
Thomas Sowell ( SOHL; born June 30, 1930) is an American economist, economic historian, and social theorist. With widely published commentary and books—and as a guest on TV and radio—he is a well-known voice in the American conservative movement as a prominent black conservative. He is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and was a recipient of the National Humanities Medal from President George W. Bush in 2002.
Sowell was born in Gastonia, North Carolina, and grew up in Harlem, New York City. Due to poverty and difficulties at home, he dropped out of Stuyvesant High School and worked various odd jobs, eventually serving in the United States Marine Corps during the Korean War. Afterward, he graduated with honors from Harvard University in 1958. He earned a master's degree in economics from Columbia University the next year, and a PhD in economics from the University of Chicago in 1968. In his academic career, he held professorships at Cornell University, Brandeis University, and the University of California, Los Angeles. He has also worked at think tanks, including the Urban Institute. Since 1977, he has worked at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, where he is the Rose and Milton Friedman Senior Fellow on Public Policy.
“Thomas Sowell” enters the record as american economist, social theorist, political philosopher and author. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Thomas, Sowell and American can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 9, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q553449. VIAF identifies the subject as 12326615. The Library of Congress control number is n79006684. 3 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1930, 2002, 1958 and 1968.
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This entry incorporates text from “Thomas Sowell” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.