W. Averell Harriman

W. Averell Harriman (1891-1986), American financier, government official, and diplomat, son of Edward Henry Harriman, born in New York City, and educated at Yale University. After heading various railroad, shipping, and banking enterprises, he entered government service in 1934 and was thereafter closely associated with the New Deal and the Democratic Party. He served in many key government and diplomatic posts. During World War II he was lend-lease administrator from 1941 to 1943, when he became ambassador to the Soviet Union (1943-1946). He then served as ambassador to Britain (1946), United States secretary of commerce (1946-1948), director of the Mutual Security Agency (1951-1953), governor of New York State (1955-1958), assistant secretary of state for Far Eastern affairs (1961-1963), and undersecretary of state for political affairs (1963-1964). In 1968 and 1969 he led the U.S. delegation conducting preliminary peace talks in Paris with North Vietnam, with the aim of negotiating a settlement of the Vietnam War. Harriman wrote America and Russia in a Changing World: A Half Century of Personal Observation (1971).