ROOSEVELT, FRANKLIN D.,

born Jan. 30, 1882, Hyde Park, N.Y., U.S. died April 12, 1945, Warm Springs, Ga. in full Franklin Delano Roosevelt, byname Fdr 32nd president of the United States (193345), the only president to be reelected three times. He expanded the federal government's powers in an effort to bring about the nation's economic recovery from the Great Depression through a series of programs and reforms known as the New Deal. He was also a major Allied leader during World War II. Roosevelt attended Harvard University (190004); after marrying his cousin Eleanor Roosevelt (1905), the niece of Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt studied at Columbia University School of Law and qualified for the New York bar. In 1910 he was elected to the New York Senate, and in 1913 he became assistant secretary of the navy. Although he was stricken with polio in 1921, he remained active in Democratic politics and was elected governor of New York state in 1928. Inaugurating a program of tax relief for farmers, he was reelected in 1930; the following year he also began establishing state relief agencies. Elected president over Herbert Hoover in 1932, Roosevelt quickly obtained passage of a sweeping economic program that provided relief, loans, and jobs through a variety of federal agencies. Roosevelt was overwhelmingly reelected in 1936. Despite setbacks, his second administration was marked by increasing acceptance of many New Deal innovations. In the late 1930s, as foreign policy began to assume increasing importance, Roosevelt showed determination to keep the nation out of war. But the outbreak of World War II in 1939 led him to favour aid to Great Britain. After he defeated Wendell L. Willkie in the presidential election of 1940, Roosevelt obtained the Lend-Lease Act to financially support Britain (1941) and denied war supplies to Japan. Once in the war, he mobilized industry for military production, played a leading role in creating an alliance with Britain and the U.S.S.R., and met with the Allied leaders Churchill and Stalin at Teheran, Iran (1943), and at Yalta in the Crimea (1945). Despite declining health, Roosevelt defeated Gov. Thomas E. Dewey of New York for election to his fourth term (1944) but served only briefly before his death.