Niall Ferguson

Niall Ferguson was born on April 18, 1964, in Glasgow, Scotland.⁠[1]

He was educated at the Glasgow Academy in his home city.⁠[2]

He was a Demy (scholar) at Magdalen College, Oxford, graduating with First Class Honours in 1985, and then spent two years as a Hanseatic Scholar in Hamburg and Berlin.⁠[3]

In 1989 he received his DPhil from the University of OxfordUniversity of OxfordThe University of Oxford is a university in Oxford, England, where teaching existed in some form by 1096; it describes itself as the oldest university in the English-speaking world and is organised as a federal system of the university and dozens of self-governing colleges.Open the full entry.⁠[4]

He was a Research Fellow at Christ’s College, Cambridge, from 1989 to 1990, and a Lecturer at Peterhouse from 1990 to 1992.⁠[1]

He was a Fellow in Modern History at Jesus College, Oxford, from 1992 to 2000, Professor of Political and Financial History at Oxford from 2000 to 2002, and Professor of Financial History at NYU’s Stern Business School from 2002 to 2004.⁠[1]

In 1995 Cambridge University Press published his first book, Paper and Iron: Hamburg Business and German Politics in the Era of Inflation 1897–1927, shortlisted for the History Today Book of the Year award.⁠[5]

The Pity of War, published in 1998, argues that Britain’s entry into the First World War was the greatest error of modern history, turning what might have been a short European war into a protracted world war.⁠[6]

Reviewing it in the London Review of Books, R.W. Johnson called the book extremely clever but argued that its claims about Germany being both dominant and weak contradicted each other.⁠[6]

In 2003 he wrote and presented a six-part history of the British Empire for Channel 4; the accompanying book, Empire, was a bestseller in both Britain and the United States.⁠[3]

From 2004 to 2016 he was Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History at Harvard UniversityHarvard UniversityHarvard University is a private research university in Massachusetts, established by the Massachusetts Bay Colony legislature in 1636 and named in 1639 for early benefactor John Harvard. Its principal campuses are in Cambridge and the Allston and Longwood neighborhoods of Boston. It includes Harvard College, graduate and professional schools, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Two governing boards share oversight. Alan M. Garber was president as of October 2026, and the endowment stood at $56.9 billion at the end of fiscal 2025.Open the full entry, and from 2006 to 2011 also William Ziegler Professor at Harvard Business School.⁠[4]

ColossusColossusColossus is a business and investing media company founded by Patrick O’Shaughnessy in 2020. It publishes podcasts, digital journalism and a print magazine, including Invest Like the Best, Business Breakdowns and programs made with independent creators.Open the full entry: The Rise and Fall of the American Empire, published in 2004, prompted Time magazine to name him one of the 100 most influential people in the world.⁠[7]

In 2006 he published The War of the World, produced alongside a television series, which reads the bloodbaths of the 20th century as marking the decline of the West; he called it the most important book he had written so far.⁠[8]

In 2008 Penguin Press published his The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World, released within weeks of the subprime meltdown; the four-part documentary based on it was named Best Documentary at the 37th International Emmy Awards on November 23, 2009.⁠[9]

In 2011 he published Civilization: The West and the Rest, asking why the West came to dominate the world for more than half a millennium and attributing it to six “killer apps” — competition, science, property rights, medicine, the consumer society and the work ethic — as well as to the fortuitous weakness of its rivals.⁠[10]

In May 2012 the BBCBBCThe BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) is the United Kingdom’s public broadcaster. Its predecessor was the British Broadcasting Company, formed in 1922, and since 1927 it has been established under a Royal Charter. It provides television, radio, and online services in the UK, is funded mainly by the television licence fee, and broadcasts worldwide in multiple languages through BBC World Service.Open the full entry named him that year’s Reith Lecturer; the series, titled The Rule of Law and its Enemies, explored the influence of man-made institutions on global economic growth and democracy.⁠[11]

In May 2013, during a question-and-answer session at an investment conference in Carlsbad, California, he suggested that the economist John Maynard Keynes was less invested in the long run because he was gay and had no children, drawing criticism.⁠[12]

Two days later he apologised “deeply and unreservedly” in a statement, calling the off-the-cuff remarks “as stupid as they were insensitive” and adding that people without children obviously also care about future generations.⁠[12]

In 2015 he published Kissinger: 1923–1968: The Idealist, the first of a two-volume biography of Henry Kissinger; in December 2016 it won the Council on Foreign RelationsCouncil on Foreign RelationsThe Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) is a nonpartisan, independent U.S. membership organization and think tank founded in 1921 and based in New York, which has published Foreign Affairs since 1922 and takes no institutional positions on policy; Michael Froman has been its 15th president since 2023.Open the full entry’ fifteenth Arthur Ross Book Award and $15,000, with jury chair Gideon Rose praising it for moving past the myths surrounding Kissinger.⁠[13]

In July 2016 he was appointed a senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, having previously been Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History at Harvard University.⁠[5]

On January 16, 2018, Penguin Press published his The Square and the Tower in the United States, drawing on network theory to examine how networks have disrupted hierarchies through history.⁠[14]

In June 2018, after leaked emails showed he had asked his research assistant and Republican students to conduct “opposition research” on a student activist, he resigned his senior role in Stanford’s Cardinal Conversations speaker series.⁠[15]

He said he regretted writing the emails, that no action was ever taken against the student and that student politics is best left to students; he remained at the Hoover Institution.⁠[15]

In 2021 he published Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe, which surveys disasters from volcanic eruptions and plagues to war and Chernobyl and centres on the Covid-19 pandemic, faulting Western governments for failing to contain the virus with mass testing and tracing while opposing lockdowns.⁠[16]

In November 2021 the founding of the University of Austin was announced, with Ferguson among its founding trustees alongside Bari Weiss and Joe LonsdaleJoe LonsdaleJoe Lonsdale is the founder and managing partner of 8VC and a co-founder of technology companies including Palantir Technologies, Addepar, and OpenGov.Open the full entry.⁠[17]

He appeared on episode 239 of the Lex FridmanLex FridmanLex Fridman is a Soviet-born, US-raised computer scientist and podcast host who works as an MIT research scientist on human-AI interaction and autonomous driving. His Lex Fridman Podcast is known for hours-long conversations with guests including heads of state and technology leaders.Open the full entry Podcast, whose description calls him a historian at the Hoover Institution; topics included the University of Austin, Sam HarrisSam HarrisSam Harris is an American author, philosopher and neuroscience PhD, host of the Making Sense podcast and founder of the Waking Up meditation app; he rose to prominence with The End of Faith and other critiques of religion and is regarded as a leading figure of the “New Atheism,” and has since written and spoken on morality, free will, meditation and politics, often provoking controversy.Open the full entry, Elon MuskElon MuskElon Musk is an entrepreneur who founded SpaceX and has long served as chief executive of Tesla; he also took part in creating PayPal, OpenAI, Neuralink, The Boring Company, and xAI. He acquired Twitter in 2022, and his businesses span spaceflight, electric vehicles, energy, artificial intelligence, and social media.Open the full entry, money, hyperinflation, Bitcoin, Ethereum and smart contracts, the worst disasters in human history and how history will remember the pandemic.⁠[18]

In June 2024 he was knighted for services to literature in the King’s Birthday Honours; he said the real recipients were the family members, teachers and mentors who formed him, and that he had sought to remain faithful to the historian’s mission, avoid anachronistic judgments and bring history out of the ivory tower.⁠[2]

On April 13, 2026, the Liberty Fund presented him in Washington with the George F. Will Award for the Advancement of Liberty and the Free Society for his contributions to the understanding of the free society, individual liberty and the human condition; at Hoover he chairs the Applied History Working Group and co-leads the Hoover History Lab.⁠[19]

As of October 2026 he is writing the second volume of his Kissinger biography, Kissinger, 1969–2023: The Player; he formerly wrote a weekly column for The Sunday Times, was a Bloomberg Opinion columnist from 2022 to 2024 and then joined The Free Press.⁠[7]

He is the founder and managing director of Greenmantle LLC, a New York-based advisory firm, a co-founder of the Latin American fintech company Ualá, and a trustee of the University of Austin, the London-based Centre for Policy Studies and the New York Historical Society.⁠[20]

He is married to the author Ayaan Hirsi Ali and has five children.⁠[7]

Personal website: Public link: https://www.niallferguson.com/ (opens in a new window)⁠[18]

X: Public account: https://x.com/nfergus (opens in a new window)⁠[18]

Harvard University: Official website: https://www.harvard.edu/ (opens in a new window)⁠[9]

Hoover Institution: Official website: https://www.hoover.org/ (opens in a new window)⁠[19]