Prof. Robert A. Mundell was born in 1932. After studying at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and London School of Economics, he received his Ph.D. from MIT in 1956. He was Post-Doctoral Fellow in Political Economy at the University of Chicago in 1956-57. He taught at Stanford University and The Johns Hopkins Bologna Center of Advanced International Studies before joining the International Monetary Fund in 1961. From 1966 to 1971, he was Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago and Editor of the Journal of Political Economy. Since 1974, has been Professor of Economics at Columbia University in New York.

Professor Mundell has been an adviser to a number of international agencies and organizations including the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the European Commission, and several governments in Latin America and Europe, the Federal Reserve Board, the US Treasury and the Government of Canada.

Professor Mundell's writings include over a hundred articles in scientific journals and books. He prepared one of the first plans for a common currency in Europe and is known as the father of the theory of optimum currency areas. He has also written extensively on the history of the international monetary system and played a significant role in the founding of the Euro.

Professor Mundell received an Honorary Professorship at Renmin University in China in 1995, the Distinguished Fellow Award from the American Economic Association in 1997, and was made Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1998. In 1999, he received the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for "his analysis of monetary and fiscal policy under different exchange rate regimes and his analysis of optimum currency areas".