Alexander Gerschenkron (Russian: Александр Гершенкрон; 1 October 1904 – 26 October 1978) was a Russian-born American Jewish economic historian and professor at Harvard University, trained in the Austrian School of economics.Born in Odessa, then part of the Russian Empire, Gerschenkron fled the country during the Russian Civil War in 1920 to Austria, where he attended the University of Vienna, earning a doctorate in 1928. After the Anschluss in 1938, he emigrated to the United States.