Joseph Schumpeter (1883-1950) was one of the most original social scientists of the twentieth century. He grew up in Vienna around the turn of the century, where he studied law and economics. For most of his life he worked as an academic, but he also tried his luck as a politician, serving briefly as finance minister in the first post-First World War (socialist) government, and as a banker (without much success). He became a professor at the University of Bonn in 1925 and later at Harvard University in the USA (1932), where he stayed on until his death.