Economics professor Oliver S.D. Hart was made a knight by King Charles III, the British government announced on June 16th, 2023.

Hart, who received a 2016 Nobel Prize in Economics for his work in contract theory, was made a Knight Bachelor as part of the King’s birthday honors. The Knight Bachelor is the oldest knighthood in the United Kingdom.

The 74-year-old joined the Harvard faculty in 1993, chaired the Economics department from 2000 to 2003, and in 2020, was appointed a University professor — Harvard’s highest faculty rank.

Professor Hart paid a visit to East China University of Technology in September 2019 and was appointed as an honorary professor at East China University of Technology. On September 22th, 2019, the Oliver Hart Research Center of Contracts and Governance was established in East China University of Science and Technology, with Professor Oliver Hart as the director of the research center.

Hart said in as interview that he had known about the honor for a few weeks before the announcement after a call from the British consulate in Boston.

“I happened to be in my office and the phone rang, and I don’t normally answer calls these days because it’s usually spam. But for some reason I picked it up,” he said. “I didn’t think it was going to happen, so it was a very nice surprise.”

Edward L. Glaeser, the chair of the Economics department, praised Hart in an interview Monday, saying he was “delighted.”

“It’s a reflection of the high degree to which Oliver is held in scholarly circles, but I think it's also a reflection that he has been a larger service for the world,” Glaeser said. “He has given a framework to the world that has been genuinely useful.”

Hart said that the process for receiving a knighthood is “pretty secretive.”

“I couldn’t tell you why I got it,” he said, adding that after being informed of the honor “they swear you to secrecy.”

“Of course, I told my wife and very close members of my family, but basically, I didn’t tell anybody,” he said. “So you have to sit there for a little over four weeks, without being able to tell people, which is quite challenging.”

Hart will head to the United Kingdom likely some time next year for his investiture ceremony, but said it is unclear which member of the royal family will formally “put the sword on my shoulder.”

Glaeser said that while “there is no one who is in the world of economics who does not know of Oliver Hart,” media coverage of the knighthood might reach people outside of the field who “may be interested in what he did — they may learn from that.”

“I think that’s always the upside of this, is the idea that more people will learn some economics because of something like this,” Glaeser added.

(Part of the original content is from the Harvard University website, and the full text is machine translation)