Celebrating famous Jews from Ukraine: Simon Kuznets

What today seems nothing out of the ordinary, once happened for the first time. In 1934, the Americans first learned what their country’s GDP was equal to. By today’s standards, it was equal to very modest $66 billion. On request of the US Congress, the calculations were made by Simon Kuznets, who was born in Pinsk (currently a city in Belarus), but all his life he said his hometown was Kharkiv.

Since 1944, the proposed by Kuznets methodology for calculating GDP has become a universally recognized tool for assessing the national wealth for all countries of the world.

In 1971, Simon Smith Kuznets received the Nobel Prize in economic sciences for proving the cyclical nature of economic development. The scientist proved that crises inevitably occur once every 15-25 years. The recession, that we are in now, was also predicted by Simon Kuznets. As well as the next crisis, which is to happen approximately in 2035-2045. It’s not long to wait, we shall see.

Kharkiv is my hometown and I am proud that it has gained fame as a university and scientific center that has given the world dozens of brilliant minds. As many as three Nobel laureates are from Kharkiv – Ilya Mechnikov, Lev Landau and Simon Kuznets. In 2016, monuments to these outstanding scientists, who studied and worked in Kharkiv, were opened near the building of the Kharkiv National University.

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