Early life and education Born to a
Jewish family in
Montreal, Quebec, Shapiro attended
Lower Canada College, a prestigious independent school in Montreal which was at that time boys-only. He earned his
B.Comm., with honors, from
McGill University in 1956 and his
Ph.D. from
Princeton University in 1964, both in the field of economics. His doctoral dissertation was titled "The Canadian monetary sector: an econometric analysis." Shapiro's parents owned the famous Ruby Foo's in Montreal. After his father's untimely death, the restaurant was passed down to him and his twin brother,
Bernard, who would later become the first
Ethics Commissioner of Canada and 14th principal of
McGill University. Shapiro managed the restaurant while studying economics at
McGill University, where he also began graduate school until he moved to
Princeton University. Shapiro was elected Fellow of the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a member of the
American Philosophical Society in 1990. He announced his retirement from the presidency of Princeton in fall 2000 to take effect in June 2001.
Shirley Tilghman, his successor, took office on June 15 of the following year. Shapiro continues to live in
Princeton, and is
professor emeritus in the departments of economics and
public policy at the university. He is trustee emeritus of the
Institute for Advanced Study. His present academic interests include
bioethics, on which he writes extensively. Shapiro chaired the
National Bioethics Advisory Commission during President
Bill Clinton's second term. He also sits on the boards of a number of prominent ventures, including the for-profit
HCA (founded by the
Frist family, which donated the
Frist Campus Center to Princeton), and the non-profit
Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and
Robert Wood Johnson Medical School. He is a fellow of the
Hastings Center, an independent bioethics research institution. He also served on the United States Olympic Committee for a number of years, and was a director of
Dow Chemical Company.
Research His fields of specialization in economics include econometrics, science policy, and the evolution of postsecondary education. He is author of several books, including
A Larger Sense of Purpose: Higher Education and Society (Princeton University Press, 2005). In 2000, Shapiro received the Council of Scientific Society Presidents Citation for Outstanding Leadership. In 2008, he was awarded the Clark Kerr Medal for Distinguished Leadership in Higher Education, presented annually by the University of California-Berkeley Academic Senate. He also received the William D. Carey Award for leadership in Science Policy from the American Association for the Advancement of Science. ==Personal life==