Alexander Rüstow

German sociologist and economist who originated the term neoliberalism at the Colloque Walter Lippmann in 1938. He was one of the fathers of the "Social Market Economy" that shaped the economy of West Germany after World War II. He is the grandnephew of Wilhelm Rüstow, the grandson of Cäsar Rüstow and the father of Dankwart Rustow.

In the 1930s, the climate in Germany became too unfriendly for Rüstow, and he obtained a chair in economic geography and history at the University of Istanbul, Turkey, where he worked at his magnum opus, Ortsbestimmung der Gegenwart (in English published as Freedom and Domination), a critique of civilization.

In 1949, Rüstow would return to Germany, where he would obtain a chair at the University of Heidelberg, where he would stay until his retirement in 1956. He died on 30 June 1963 at age 78 in Heidelberg.