Robert Dorfman | |
|---|---|
| Born | October 27, 1916 |
| Died | June 24, 2002 (aged 85) |
| Nationality | American |
| Academic career | |
| Field | Economics |
| Institution | Harvard University |
| Alma mater | University of California, Berkeley |
| Doctoral advisor | William Fellner R. Aaron Gordon |
Robert Dorfman (27 October 1916 – 24 June 2002) was professor of political economy at Harvard University. Dorfman made great contributions to the fields of economics, statistics, group testing and in the process of coding theory.[1]
His paper—'The Detection of Defective Members of Large Populations' (1943) is a landmark in the sphere of Combinatorial Group Testing. To quote collaborator and Nobel laureate Robert M. Solow—"After starting his career as a statistician—his paper 'The Detection of Defective Members of Large Populations' (1943) is still a landmark—he turned to economics at the moment when linear models of production and allocation captured the profession's imagination." Dorfman co-authored Linear Programming and Economic Analysis with Solow and economist Paul A. Samuelson.