Peter Ferdinand Drucker is considered the "Godfather of Modern Management".

Born in Vienna Austria, as a university student, Drucker wrote a critique of a pro-Nazi scholar of that time, and had to escape to America.

Early in his American career, Drucker took an assignment to write about the corporate structure General Motors, appearing under the title, The Corporation, which praises the top management. Unfortunately, this management was displaced in a kind of "palace revolution" by managers taking very different views, so readers of the book have been confused by "theory and practice" at GM.

Realizing that no one had seriously treated "management theory", Drucker has made this his life work.

He has taught at Bennington College, New York University, and as Clark Professor of Social Science at Claremont Graduate School. He has also written editorial columns for the Wall Street Journal, and articles for the Harvard Business Review.

Drucker once said that the best American managers are "the ladies" of The Girl Scouts of America" ("They really know how to get the most out of a buck."). And he said that the best manger in the world is the Japanese housewife.

I value Drucker for two unique opinions:

• unlike historians and other social scientists, Drucker believes that "our rulers" should offer "justification of their right to rule";
• Drucker is the only writer on economics I've read who attempts to explain the source of new wealth in the economy of a nation, attributing it to (the very, very, very neglected) inventors and creators in his 1969 book, The Age of Discontinuity. (Yes, Ophelia, I always approve of a sermon when the minister agrees with me.)