ECLAC Inaugurates the Raúl Prebisch Chair

(23 August 2001) To commemorate the one hundredth anniversary of Prebisch's birth this year, ECLAC has created this position in his honour, which will be held by distinguished public figures involved in Latin American economics.

The first Magisterial Lecture, called The Roots of Globalization, will be given by Brazilian economist Celso Furtado. It will begin at 5 p.m. in the Raúl Prebisch Conference Room at the Commission's headquarters, in Santiago, Chile.

At 6:15 p.m., the exhibition Celso Furtado: Vocation Latin America will be officially opened. It covers Furtado's work through the years, and was sponsored and financed by the government of Rio de Janeiro state, the Brazilian Academy of Literature, the Carlos Chagas Research Foundation, and ECLAC.

Furtado is considered to be one of the region's most influential economists of the past century. He was born in 1920, in the city of Pombal, Brazil, and holds a doctorate from the Institute of Economic Sciences from La Sorbonne (France).

Throughout his career Furtado has held many high-ranking public positions, serving as minister of both Planning and Culture in Brazil, as well as Director of that country's National Development Bank. He was also Director of ECLAC's Economic Development Division from 1950 to 1957 and has received important academic distinctions, among them the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Prize in 1946 and the Jabuti Prize for essays, in 1999.