Winthrop Knowlton (1930-2023) grew up on Long Island and attended The Lawrenceville School, Harvard College (1953), and Harvard Business School (1955), where he graduated with distinction as a Baker Scholar. Over the course of his long and extraordinary life, Knowlton worked in a wide range of professions that encompassed finance, government service, book publishing, and academia. He was a prolific and well-reviewed author of six books--a mystery, two investment guides, the novel False Premises, and the memoir My First Revolution, about the year he spent in China between boarding school and college on the eve of the Chinese Communist Revolution in 1948.
He began his career at the investment firm White Weld & Co., became the firm's youngest partner and was named co-head of the research department. Three years later, U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Fowler hired him to be a deputy assistant secretary in the Lyndon B. Johnson administration. Within a year he was promoted to assistant secretary of the treasury for international affairs.
In 1967, Knowlton went into book publishing and became chairman and CEO of Harper & Row. During his tenure, he conducted secret negotiations to secure the rights to the Soviet dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag Archipelago and orchestrated its surprise publication. Knowlton left book publishing in 1982 to become the first director of the Center for Business and Government at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, and Henry R. Luce Professor of Ethics and Public Policy.
Knowlton served on many boards of directors, including Bethlehem Steel, Audible, Inc., The Equitable Life Assurance Society, and as the president of the board of the New York City Ballet. He was equally committed to the nonprofit sector, most importantly as chairman of the Jackson Laboratory from 1992-1997.
Learn more about his life and accomplishments here.
