Editing Richard N. Gardner (section)

==Early Life and Education==
Born in New York City on July 9, 1927, Gardner was the son of Ethel Alias and Samuel Gardner (originally Goldberg), a lawyer, and a homemaker. His family was of Jewish heritage, a background shared with his future wife, Danielle Luzzatto, whose family fled Italy’s 1938 anti-Semitic laws. Gardner served in the U.S. Army during World War II, stationed stateside, before pursuing higher education.

He earned a B.A. in Economics from Harvard University in 1948, followed by a J.D. from Yale Law School in 1951, where he edited the Yale Law Journal. As a Rhodes Scholar, he completed a D.Phil. in Economics at Oxford University in 1954, with his thesis, Sterling-Dollar Diplomacy, becoming a seminal study of Anglo-American economic collaboration in creating the Bretton Woods institutions and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). This work laid the foundation for his lifelong focus on international economic policy.

During a 1951 winter break in Paris, Gardner met Eleanor Roosevelt, whose views on human rights and global poverty profoundly influenced him. He later wrote a 1988 New York Times op-ed on her role in crafting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, reflecting his admiration for her legacy.