Alexander Nove was born in
Saint Petersburg,
Russia, the son of Jacob Novakovsky. His father was a
Menshevik who emigrated with his family in 1924 to Britain. He was educated at
King Alfred School in
London and received a BSc in economics from the
London School of Economics in 1936. The school later made him an Honorary Fellow in 1982. Nove served in the
Royal Signal Corps from 1939 but was transferred to Military Intelligence until 1946, reaching the rank of Major. From 1947 to 1958, he worked in the
Civil Service, mainly at the
Board of Trade. He was a Reader in Russian Social and Economic Studies at the
University of London from 1958 to 1963 and Professor of Economics at the
University of Glasgow from 1963 to 1982. He was then
Emeritus Professor and Honorary Senior Research Fellow at Glasgow until his death. In 1982, Nove was elected a Fellow of the
Royal Society of Edinburgh. His proposers were
William Hugh Clifford Frend,
Sydney Checkland, Thomas Wilson,
George Wyllie, Sir
Kenneth Alexander and
Leslie Alcock. ==Personal life and death==