Bangalore: Benjamin Graham, a British-born American economist and an investor by profession, excelled as a best financial educator ever. Graham's followers include Warren Buffett, Irving Kahn, William J. Ruane, Chris Johnston, Walter J. Schloss and others.

Buffett credits Graham as a man with a sound intellectual investment framework and describes him as the second most influential person in his life after his own father. In fact, Graham had such an overwhelming influence on his students that two of them, Buffett and Kahn, named their sons, Howard Graham Buffett and Thomas Graham Kahn, after him.

He is also known as the father of two fundamental investment disciplines – security analysis and value investing, an investment approach which he began teaching at Columbia Business School in 1928 and subsequently refined with David Dodd through various editions of their famous book ‘Security Analysis’.

Personal Profile

Benjamin Graham was born in England but moved to New York City with his family when he was one year old. At the age of 20, he graduated from Columbia University, as salutatorian of his class. He got a job offer as an instructor in English, Mathematics, and Philosophy but refused and took a job on Wall Street eventually starting the Graham-Newman Partnership. In 1926, Graham started lecturing at Columbia on finance, which lasted till 1956, until he retired.

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