Ben Shalom Bernanke (pronounced \ber-NAN-kee\, \bər-'nan-kē\ or \bɚ.ˈnæn.ki\) was born December 13, 1953. He is the Chairman of the Board of Governors of the United States Federal Reserve. Bernanke succeeded Alan Greenspan on February 1, 2006. He is ranked 4th most powerful person in the world in an annual ranking by Newsweek.

Early life

Born in Augusta, Georgia, Bernanke was raised in a ranch house on East Jefferson Street in . His father Philip was a pharmacist and part-time theater manager, and his mother Edna was originally a schoolteacher. He is the eldest of three children, having a brother and sister. His younger brother, Seth, is a lawyer in Charlotte, North Carolina, and his younger sister, Sharon, is an alumna and longtime administrator at Berklee College of Music in Boston.

The Bernankes were one of the few Jewish families in the area, attending a local synagogue called Ohav Shalom; as a child, Bernanke learned Hebrew from his maternal grandfather Harold Friedman, who was a professional hazzan and Hebrew teacher. His father and uncle co-owned and managed a drugstore that they bought from his paternal grandfather, Jonas Bernanke. Jonas was born in Boryslav, Austria-Hungary (today part of Ukraine), on January 23, 1891, and immigrated to the United States from Przemyśl, Poland (part of Austria-Hungary until 1919). He arrived at Ellis Island, age 30, Thursday, June 30, 1921, with his wife Pauline, age 25. On the ship's manifest, Jonas' occupation is listed as “clerk” and Pauline's as “doctor med.” They moved to Dillon, South Carolina, from New York in the 1940s.

Education

Bernanke was educated at East Elementary, J. V. Martin Junior High, and Dillon High School, where he was class valedictorian. At age 11, Bernanke won the state spelling bee competition but finished 26th overall at the national competition in Washington, tripping up on the word “edelweiss.” Bernanke also taught himself calculus, edited the school newspaper, and achieved a near-perfect SAT score of 1590 out of 1600. He was also an All-State saxophonist, playing in the school's marching band.

Bernanke worked construction on a new hospital before leaving for college. During the summer, he attended Camp Ramah located in New England.Fact: date=March 2009

Bernanke spent his undergraduate years at Harvard University and graduated with a BA in economics summa cum laude'' in 1975. To support himself throughout college, he worked during the summers at South of the Border, a roadside attraction in his hometown of Dillon. He received a PhD in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1979. His thesis was named "Long-term commitments, dynamic optimization, and the business cycle" and his thesis adviser was Stanley Fischer.

Academic and government career

right|thumb|200px|Bernanke meeting with United States President Barack Obama. Bernanke taught at the Stanford Graduate School of Business from 1979 until 1985, was a visiting professor at New York University and went on to become a tenured professor at Princeton University in the Department of Economics. He chaired that department from 1996 until September 2002, when he went on public service leave. He resigned his position at Princeton July 1, 2005. Dr. Bernanke served as a member of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System from 2002 to 2005, and was Chairman of the President's Council of Economic Advisers, from June 2005 to January 2006. On February 1, 2006, he was appointed as a member of the Board for a fourteen-year term and to a four-year term as Chairman.