John Komlos

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title: "John Komlos" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["american-economic-historians", "hungarian-emigrants-to-the-united-states", "1944-births", "living-people", "duke-university-faculty", "american-academic-journal-editors", "auxologists"] description: "American economic historian" topic_path: "geography/united-states" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Komlos" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0

::summary American economic historian ::

::data[format=table title="Infobox economist"]

Field	Value
name	John Komlos
image	Komlos.jpg
image_size
native_name
birth_date
birth_place	Budapest, Hungary
death_date
nationality	American
institutions	University of Munich
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
field	Economic history
alma_mater	University of Chicago
influences	Robert Fogel
contributions	Economics and Human Biology
awards
module
::

| name = John Komlos | image = Komlos.jpg | image_size = | alt = | caption = | native_name = | native_name_lang = | birth_date = | birth_place = Budapest, Hungary | death_date = | death_place = | resting_place = | resting_place_coords = | nationality = American | institutions = University of Munich University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill | field = Economic history | school_tradition = | alma_mater = University of Chicago | influences = Robert Fogel | contributions = Economics and Human Biology | awards = | memorials = | spouse = | signature = | module = | repec_prefix = | repec_id =

John Komlos (born 28 December 1944) is an American economic historian of Hungarian descent and former holder of the chair of economic history at the University of Munich.

Personal life

Komlos was born in 1944 in Budapest in Hungary during the Holocaust. After becoming refugees during the 1956 revolution, his family fled to the United States where Komlos finally grew up in Chicago.

Career

Komlos received a PhD in history in 1978 and a second PhD in economics in 1990 from the University of Chicago. After inspired by Robert Fogel to work on the history of human height, Komlos devoted most of his academic career developing and expanding the research agenda that became known as Anthropometric history, the study of the effect of economic development on human biology as indicated by the physical stature or the obesity rate prevalence of a population.

Komlos was a fellow at the Carolina Population Center of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill from 1984 to 1986. He worked as a professor of economics and of economic history at the University of Munich for eighteen years before his retirement. He also taught as a visitor at Harvard, Duke University, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, as well as in Vienna and St. Gallen.

In 2003, Komlos founded Economics and Human Biology, a quarterly peer-reviewed academic journal covering research on biological economics, economics in the context of human biology and health. In 2013, he was elected a Fellow of the Cliometric Society.

Works

References

References

1. "Nem hagytam, hogy átmossák az agyam – magyar származású sztárközgazdász a Makronómnak | Mandiner".
2. "The Newsletter of the Cliometric Society". Mary Eschelbach Hansen.
3. (24 July 2014). "John Komlos".
4. Bilger, Burkhard. (2004-03-28). "The Height Gap".
5. (2021). "Amit minden közgazdaságot tanulónak tudnia kell". Economic Review; Budapest.
6. Komlos, John. (1989). "Nutrition and Economic Development in the Eighteenth-Century Habsburg Monarchy: An Anthropometric History". Princeton University Press.
7. "Magyar származású közgazdász írta meg az emberarcú kapitalizmus krédóját {{!}} Mandiner".
8. Shute, Nancy. (2010-10-25). "Measuring A Country's Health By Its Height".
9. [[Paul Krugman]]. (2007-06-15). "America comes up short".
10. Dániel, Oláh. "Nem hagytam, hogy átmossák az agyam – magyar származású sztárközgazdász a Makronómnak {{!}} Mandiner".
11. "2013 Fellows".
12. Quinn, Terrance. (October 11, 2020). "Book Review: Foundations of real-world economics: What every economics student needs to know (2nd ed.), by Komlos, J.". The American Economist.

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