Shultz, George Pratt, 1920-

George Pratt Shultz was born December 13, 1920, in New York, New York, son of Birl E. and Margaret Pratt Shultz. He married Helena Marie O''Brien in 1946. He received a B.A. in economics from Princeton University in 1942. That same year he joined the U.S. Marine Corps and served until 1945, attaining the rank of Captain. In 1949, he earned a Ph.D. in industrial economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). From 1948 to 1957, he taught in both the MIT Department of Economics and the MIT Sloan School of Management, with a leave of absence in 1955 to serve as a senior staff economist on President Dwight Eisenhower''s Council of Economic Advisers. In 1957, he joined the University of Chicago, Graduate School of Business as professor of industrial relations and was named dean in 1962. From 1968 to 1969, he was a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University.

President Richard Nixon appointed him Secretary of Labor and he served from January 22, 1969 to July 1, 1970. While Secretary, he promoted revenue-sharing manpower programs and the reduction of poverty. He supported a comprehensive manpower system to integrate planning and allocation of resources and proposed the Manpower Training Bill of 1969, which was a precursor of manpower legislation to follow. He provided leadership in encouraging equal employment opportunities, specifically through the "Philadelphia Plan" for non-discrimination in federal construction projects. He was the first director of the Office of Management and Budget from July 1, 1970 to June 11, 1972. He then became Secretary of the Treasury and served from June 12, 1972 to May 8, 1974. While Secretary he, along with Paul Volcker and Arthur Burns, supported the decision of the Nixon administration to end the gold standard and the Bretton Woods system. He was also named Chairman of the new Council on Economic Policy and the Cost of Living Council. On March 6, 1973, the President named him Chairman of the East-West Trade Policy Committee, and on November 25, he was appointed a member of the President''s Emergency Energy Action Group. As chairman of the East-West Trade Policy Committee, he traveled to Moscow in 1973 and negotiated a series of trade protocols with the Soviet Union. He also represented the United States at the Tokyo meeting of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade.

In 1974, Shultz left government service to become president and director of Bechtel Group. On July 16, 1982, he was appointed by President Ronald Reagan to serve as the sixtieth U.S. Secretary of State. He served as Secretary from July 16, 1982 to January 20, 1989. While Secretary, he frequently clashed with the more hawkish members of the Reagan administration. In particular, he was well known for outspoken opposition to the "arms for hostages" scandal that would eventually become the Iran Contra situation.

In January 1989, he rejoined Stanford University as the Jack Steele Parker Professor of International Economics at the Graduate School of Business and a distinguished fellow at the Hoover Institution. He was awarded the Medal of Freedom, the nation''s highest civilian honor, on January 19, 1989. He also received the Seoul Peace Prize in 1992; the Eisenhower Medal for Leadership and Service in 2001, and the Reagan Distinguished American Award in 2002. He is the recipient of the Elliot Richardson Prize for Excellence and Integrity in Public Service, The James H. Doolittle Award, and the John Witherspoon Medal for Distinguished Statesmanship. The George Shultz National Foreign Service Training Center in Arlington, Virginia, was dedicated on May 29, 2002. He was named a Distinguished Fellow of the American Economic Association in 2005.

In 2005, Shultz was a member of the Hoover Institution, American Enterprise Institute, the New Atlantic Initiative, the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq and the Committee on the Present Danger. He also served on the board of directors for the Bechtel Corporation, Gilead Sciences, and Charles Schwab Corporation.