British economist who shared (with Theodore W. Schultz (Schultz, Theodore William), an American) the 1979 Nobel Prize for Economics for his studies of economic development and his construction of an innovative model relating the terms of trade between less developed and more developed nations to their respective levels of labour productivity in agriculture.

Lewis attended the London School of Economics after winning a government scholarship. He graduated in 1937 and received a Ph.D. in economics there in 1940. He was a lecturer at the school from 1938 to 1947, professor of economics at the University of Manchester from 1947 to 1958, principal of University College of the West Indies in 1959–62, and professor at Princeton University from 1963 to 1983. He served as adviser on economic development to many international commissions and to several African, Asian, and Caribbean governments. He helped establish, and in 1970–73 headed, the Caribbean Development Bank. Lewis was knighted in 1963.

Lewis wrote several books, including The Principles of Economic Planning (1949), The Theory of Economic Growth (1955), Development Planning (1966), Tropical Development 1880–1913 (1971), and Growth and Fluctuations 1870–1913 (1978).