Stanley Fischer, an economist and central banker whose expertise helped guide global economic policies and defuse financial crises for decades, died on April 30 at his home in Lexington, MA. He was 81.

Mr. Fischer served as head of Israel’s central bank from 2005 to 2013, as vice chair of the Federal Reserve Board from 2014 to 2017, and as the No. 2 officer at the International Monetary Fund from 1994 to 2001, when that agency was struggling to contain financial panics in Mexico, Russia, Asia and Latin America, The New York Times said.

As a professor at M.I.T., he was a thesis adviser to an extraordinary range of future leaders, including Ben S. Bernanke, later chairman of the Fed; Mario Draghi, president of the European central bank; and Kazuo Ueda, governor of the Bank of Japan. His former students also included Christina D. Romer and N. Gregory Mankiw, who served as chairs of the U.S. Council of Economic Advisors, and Lawrence H. Summers, who served as secretary of the Treasury and president of Harvard University.