This paper investigates how Paul van Zeeland, Prime Minister in the 1930s, became one of the most famous Belgian monetary economists. We discuss his early experiences in Belgium, his studies at Princeton with Kemmerer and his return to Europe as the first Head of the Economic Service of the National Bank of Belgium. We analyse his adherence to the gold standard, the quantity theory of money and the real bills doctrine. We mainly focus on his PhD Dissertation on the Federal Reserve System and on papers he wrote in the early twenties located in the NBB archives.