Her former professor Joseph Stiglitz, another Nobel laureate, has called her one of his brightest and most memorable students. As a teaching assistant, Yellen was so meticulous in taking notes during Tobin's macroeconomic class that they ended up as the unofficial textbook circulated among generations of graduate students, and known as the "Yellen Notes". Her dissertation was titled Employment, Output and Capital Accumulation in an Open Economy: A Disequilibrium Approach under the supervision of James Tobin, a noted economist who would later received the Nobel prize. and earned her MA and PhD in economics from Yale University in 1971. Yellen graduated summa cum laude from Brown University with bachelor's in economics. While in college, she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa Society. However, during the freshman year, she switched her planned major to economics and was particularly influenced by professors George Herbert Borts and Herschel Grossman. Yellen enrolled at the Pembroke College in Brown University, initially intended to study philosophy. In line with school tradition, for the editor to interview the valedictorian, she conducted an interview with herself in the third person. She graduated in 1963, being class valedictorian. Yellen was one of 30 students to win state Regents scholarships for college, and one of a select few to win the mayor’s citation for scholarship. She also earned a National Merit commendation letter, and was admitted to a selective science honors program at Columbia University to study mathematics on Saturday mornings. Yellen attended local Fort Hamilton High School, where she was honor society member, participated in the boosters club, the psychology club, and the history club, as well as the editor-in-chief of the Pilot, the school newspaper, which continued its 13-year streak as the first-place winner of the prestigious Columbia Scholastic Press Association contest under her leadership. Anna left teaching to raise Janet and her older brother, John, who now serves as program director for archaeology at the National Science Foundation.
Her mother was Anna Ruth (née Blumenthal 1907–1986), an elementary school teacher, and her father was Julius Yellen (1906–1975), a family physician, who worked from the ground floor of their home. Yellen was born on August 13, 1946, to a family of Polish Jewish ancestry in the Bay Ridge, Brooklyn neighborhood of New York City's borough, where she also grew up.
Janet Louise Yellen (born August 13, 1946) is an American economist, educator and government official serving as the 78th United States secretary of the treasury since January 26, 2021.
Member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governorsġ1th President of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Franciscoġ8th Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers