Walt Whitman Rostow

1916-2003

Walt Whitman Rostow is an American economist and historian, educated at Yale and Oxford. He taught at Cambridge and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology before becoming special assistant to President Johnson in 1966. His most important writings include The Process of Economic Growth (1962), and Stages of Economic Growth (1960). Rostow said that during economic development societies passed through five stages: the traditional society, the pre-conditions for take-off, the take-off, the drive to maturity, and maturity.