Thomas Sowell was born in North Carolina and grew up in Harlem. As with many others in his neighborhood, Thomas Sowell left home early and did not finish high school. The next few years were difficult ones, but eventually he joined the Marine Corps and became a photographer in the Korean War. After leaving the service, Thomas Sowell entered Harvard University, worked a part-time job as a photographer and studied the science that would become his passion and profession: economics. After graduating magna cum laude from Harvard University (1958), Thomas Sowell went on to receive his master's in economics from Columbia University (1959) and a doctorate in economics from the University of Chicago (1968). In the early '60s, Sowell held jobs as an economist with the Department of Labor and AT&T. But his real interest was in teaching and scholarship. In 1965, at Cornell University, Sowell began the first of many professorships. Thomas Sowell's other teaching assignments include Rutgers University, Amherst College, Brandeis University and the University of California at Los Angeles, where he taught in the early '70s and also from 1984 to 1989. Thomas Sowell has published a large volume of writing. His dozen books, as well as numerous articles and essays, cover a wide range of topics, from classic economic theory to judicial activism, from civil rights to choosing the right college. Moreover, much of his writing is considered ground-breaking -- work that will outlive the great majority of scholarship done today. Though Thomas Sowell had been a regular contributor to newspapers in the late '70s and early '80s, he did not begin his career as a newspaper columnist until 1984. George F. Will's writing, says Sowell, proved to him that someone could say something of substance in so short a space (750 words). And besides, writing for the general public enables him to address the heart of issues without the smoke and mirrors that so often accompany academic writing. In 1990, he won the prestigious Francis Boyer Award, presented by The American Enterprise Institute. Currently Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institute in Stanford, Calif. http://www.townhall.com/columnists/ThomasSowell http://media.townhall.com/TownHall/icons/TH-feed-icon-128x128.gif http://www.townhall.com/columnists/ThomasSowell TownHall.com, Where your opinion counts. 128 Copyright (c) 2012 Townhall.com, A Salem Communications Web. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED jim.dearras@townhall.com (Jim De Arras) Thu, 09 Feb 2012 05:01:00 GMT Thu, 09 Feb 2012 05:01:00 GMT http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss RSS.NET: http://www.rssdotnet.com/ A funny thing happened to Mitt Romney on the way to his coronation as the inevitable Republican candidate for President of the United States. Minnesota, Missouri and Colorado happened. Rick Santorum beat him in all... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/ThomasSowell/2012/02/09/the_antiromney_vote b39d5d70-1458-4147-822d-0bec52ff756b Thu, 09 Feb 2012 05:01:00 GMT Governor Mitt Romney's statement about not worrying about the poor has been treated as a gaffe in much of the media, and those in the Republican establishment who have been rushing toward endorsing his coronation as the... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/ThomasSowell/2012/02/07/a_defining_moment 25724b85-97f2-4675-82fd-f2fe5d42ffd4 Tue, 07 Feb 2012 05:01:00 GMT California has a huge state debt and Washington has a huge national debt. But that does not discourage either Governor Jerry Brown or President Barack Obama from wanting to launch a very costly high-speed rail... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/ThomasSowell/2012/02/01/getting_nowhere_very_fast d7ed8ced-16d8-4e53-a629-b2a1e6a8e82a Wed, 01 Feb 2012 05:01:00 GMT The Republican establishment is pulling out all the stops to try to keep Newt Gingrich from becoming the party's nominee for President of the United States -- and some are not letting the facts get in their way.Among... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/ThomasSowell/2012/01/31/the_florida_smear_campaign 2b5b8784-e38b-492f-ac54-72f2fd417f88 Tue, 31 Jan 2012 05:01:00 GMT The Republican candidates' circular firing squad now seems to be using machine guns. Whoever the eventual "last man standing" turns out to be, he may not be standing very tall or very steadily on his feet -- and he may... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/ThomasSowell/2012/01/26/is_anybody_serious 8f9f2ceb-4281-40df-a95b-6cfa743ce8cb Thu, 26 Jan 2012 05:01:00 GMT This may be the golden age of presumptuous ignorance. The most recent demonstrations of that are the Occupy Wall Street mobs. It is doubtful how many of these semi-literate sloganizers could tell the difference between... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/ThomasSowell/2012/01/25/a_brass_age 24ed7d94-4f1d-446c-afa2-291df7b98e7b Wed, 25 Jan 2012 05:01:00 GMT Just days before the South Carolina primary, polls showed Mitt Romney leading Newt Gingrich. Then came the debates and the question about Gingrich's private life, which brought a devastating response from the former... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/ThomasSowell/2012/01/24/south_carolina_message eb862437-d9fd-4800-9734-006161120b14 Tue, 24 Jan 2012 05:01:00 GMT Different histories, geography, demography and cultures have left various groups, races, nations and civilizations with radically different abilities to create wealth.In centuries past, the majority population of... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/ThomasSowell/2012/01/20/an_ignored_disparity_part_iv 48b08b7f-bc65-48c2-a652-c9de3b772ef9 Fri, 20 Jan 2012 05:01:00 GMT Anyone who has ever been in a Third World country, or even in a slum neighborhood at home, is likely to wonder why there can be such dire poverty among some people, while others are prospering.Both politicians and... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/ThomasSowell/2012/01/19/an_ignored_disparity_part_iii ba35ee2f-76c2-4de8-8766-38cf5f939028 Thu, 19 Jan 2012 05:01:00 GMT One of the ways of trying to reduce the vast disparities in economic success, which are common in countries around the world, is by making higher education more widely available, even for people without the money to pay... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/ThomasSowell/2012/01/18/an_ignored_disparity_part_ii c8591e4b-5bf0-4b6d-afb9-7fd867e06fd1 Wed, 18 Jan 2012 05:01:00 GMT With all the talk about "disparities" in innumerable contexts, there is one very important disparity that gets remarkably little attention -- disparities in the ability to create wealth. People who are preoccupied, or... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/ThomasSowell/2012/01/17/an_ignored_disparity bf27556f-eb60-467a-8200-8a37df421b7a Tue, 17 Jan 2012 05:01:00 GMT The news that Eastman Kodak is preparing to file for bankruptcy, after being the leading photographic company in the world for more than a hundred years, truly marks the end of an era.The skills required to use the... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/ThomasSowell/2012/01/10/kodak_and_the_post_office 626bcb71-491e-443c-96e1-1cc17b0b43aa Tue, 10 Jan 2012 05:01:00 GMT No one seems to be really happy with this year's field of Republican candidates for that party's presidential nomination -- except perhaps the Democrats.The sudden rise, and equally sudden fall, of a succession of... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/ThomasSowell/2011/12/29/republican_voters_choices d6419eae-9235-469e-ad92-1478bb7d2a6a Thu, 29 Dec 2011 05:01:00 GMT