Bernanke grew up in Dillon, S.C., where his father worked as a pharmacist and his mother as a teacher. He graduated summa cum laude in economics from Harvard University (1975) and earned a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT; 1979). His first professorial appointment was at Stanford University, where he taught economics from 1979 to 1985. He became a full professor in 1985 when he moved to Princeton University, and he served as a visiting professor at both New York University and MIT. Widely published on a range of economic issues—including macroeconomics, monetary policy, the Great Depression, and business cycles—Bernanke was awarded both a Guggenheim and a Sloan Fellowship, and in 2001 he became editor of the American Economic Review. The following year he was appointed to the Board of Governors of the Fed, and he became noted for thorough research and diplomacy when opinions among the governors differed. His political strengths were also evident in early 2005 when he was named chairman of the President's Council of Economic Advisers.

In 2005 Bernanke was nominated by U.S. Pres. George W. Bush (Bush, George W.) to succeed Alan Greenspan (Greenspan, Alan) as chairman of the Fed. He took office on Feb. 1, 2006. With his strong background in academia, Bernanke represented a clear break from previous Fed chairmen, who had usually come from Wall Street. While expected to uphold the style of fiscal management established by Greenspan, he brought certain important changes to the Fed, mainly in regard to inflation. Although his predecessor rejected inflation targeting, Bernanke preferred a stated inflation objective, which he believed would bring about economic growth and stability. In September 2008 he worked with Bush and Secretary of the U.S. Treasury Henry Paulson (Paulson, Henry) to draft the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act (Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008), which aimed to protect the U.S. financial system during the subprime mortgage crisis, a severe contraction of liquidity in credit markets worldwide brought about by widespread losses in the subprime mortgage sector.