Short answers, pulled from the story.
David Saul Landes was a professor of economics and history at Harvard University, born on the 29th of April 1924 and died on the 17th of August 2013. He is known for major works including The Wealth and Poverty of Nations, The Unbound Prometheus, and Revolution in Time, which examined why some nations industrialized and grew wealthy while others did not.
Landes argued that culture, geography, and institutions help explain why certain parts of the world industrialized first, with Europe at the center of his analysis. He openly embraced the charge of Eurocentrism, arguing that an explanation for an economic transformation that happened first in Europe must, by necessity, be Eurocentric.
Critics argued that Landes placed too much weight on European culture and institutions in explaining global economic development, which they felt diminished other societies. Landes accepted the label but maintained that analyzing a phenomenon that originated in Europe requires a Eurocentric frame.
Landes earned a B.A. from City College of New York in 1942 and a Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1953. He later became a professor of economics and history at Harvard.
While waiting for his military call-up, Landes studied cryptanalysis. He was then assigned to the Signal Corps, where he worked on deciphering Japanese coded messages.
Landes wrote Bankers and Pashas (1958), The Unbound Prometheus, Revolution in Time, The Wealth and Poverty of Nations, and Dynasties. His works were praised for their detailed treatment of economic history and debated for their Eurocentric framing.