Gustav Ranis '52, the valedictorian of Brandeis' first graduating class, passed away Tuesday, Oct. 15 at the age of 83.

A committed member of the school's inaugural class, Ranis was Brandeis' first member of Phi Beta Kappa, the first alumnus to earn a Ph.D. and first alumnus to join the Board of Trustees, according to Senior Vice President of Institutional Advancement Nancy Winship.

At Brandeis, Ranis served as Student Union president for his junior year and senior class president the next year, played for the since-disestablished football team and was involved in Hillel, said Winship in an interview with the Justice. At Brandeis' first commencement, he delivered his valedictorian speech alongside commencement speaker Eleanor Roosevelt.

After earning a Bachelor of Arts in Economics at Brandeis, Ranis received his Master's degree and Ph.D. in economics at Yale University.

According to an Oct. 17 BrandeisNOW article, from 1958 to 1961, Ranis worked abroad for the Ford Foundation as director of the Pakistan Institute of Development Economics. He then started teaching at Yale in 1964 as a professor of international economics, where Ranis remained a professor until his retirement in 2005, at which point he was named Frank Altschul Professor Emeritus of International Economics.

Brandeis awarded Ranis an honorary degree in 1982 for his work as an economist and the Alumni Achievement Award for his dedication as an alumni leader 10 years later, according to the BrandeisNOW article. He accepted the award again in 2012 when Brandeis honored the class of 1952.

According to University President Frederick Lawrence, in addition to authoring more than 20 books and 300 articles on theoretical and policy-related issues of development, he served as a consultant for the United Nations Development Program, UN Food and Agriculture Organization, UN International Labor Organization, the World Bank, International Development Bank and Asian Development Bank, as well as the Brookings Institution, Pearson Commission, Ford Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation and U.S. Agency for International Development.

"Gus Ranis was a trailblazer for Brandeis," Lawrence wrote in an email to the Justice. "As someone who escaped the Holocaust as a young boy, Gus had a great capacity for looking forward and for healing the world," he said.

Lawrence wrote that he will miss Ranis's energy and devotion. "[Ranis] was an untiring advocate for the University. Despite working on many of the most difficult problems in global development, he remained an optimist who believed in making the world a better place," he wrote.

Winship, who had known Ranis for 20 years, said, "From the very beginning I was impressed not only with how brilliant he was as an international economist, but also how he never forgot his values."

She not only commended Ranis' academic work, but also said that "he was incredibly humble for who he was as a Yale professor, and his class revered and admired him."

According to Winship, Ranis continued to attend Board of Trustees meetings until his passing. "He had extremely high standards for Brandeis in terms of admissions and the quality of the academic program," she said. "He felt great about where Brandeis is today."

"When I think of his face and his smile, I think of what a pleasant, highly ethical and sometimes visionary person he was," she said. "He will truly be missed at the Board of Trustees meetings."

Ranis is survived by his wife Rachel Ranis '55, whom he met at Brandeis, along with his three children and four grandchildren.