Eli Heckscher
Heckscher was born in Stockholm, son of the Jewish Danish-born businessman Isidor Heckscher and his spouse Rosa Meyer, and completed his secondary education there in 1897. He studied at Uppsala University and Gothenburg University, completing his PhD in Uppsala in 1907. He was professor of Political economy and Statistics at the Stockholm School of Economics from 1909 until 1919, when he exchanged that chair for a research professorship in economic history, finally retiring as emeritus professor in 1945. In 1929 Heckscher founded the Institute for Economic History Research.
Joseph Hirsch
The son of physician Charles S. Hirsch and Fannie Wittenberg, he grew up in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and attended Central High School. He was of German-Jewish heritage. At age 17, he entered the Pennsylvania Museum and School of Industrial Art (now the University of the Arts), where he was instructed in the Philadelphia realist tradition of Thomas Eakins. After graduation, he studied privately with George Luks in New York City (1932–33). Luks was a founder of the Ashcan School and one of "The Eight," a group of painters who depicted everyday scenes of urban life. Luks introduced Hirsch to the Social Realism movement.