Herbert A. Simon

For the Indiana Pacers' owner, see Herbert Simon (real estate).

Herbert A. Simon
Simon c. 1981
Born
Herbert Alexander Simon

(1916-06-15)June 15, 1916
Milwaukee, Wisconsin, U.S.
DiedFebruary 9, 2001(2001-02-09) (aged 84)
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, U.S.
EducationUniversity of Chicago (BA, PhD)
Known forBounded rationality
Satisficing
Information Processing Language
Logic Theorist
General Problem Solver
Spouse
Dorothea Isabel Pye[5]
​
​
(m. 1939)​
Children3
Awards
Scientific career
FieldsEconomics
Artificial intelligence
Computer science
Political science
InstitutionsCarnegie Mellon University
Doctoral advisorHenry Schultz
Other academic advisorsRudolf Carnap
Nicholas Rashevsky
Harold Lasswell
Charles Merriam[1]
John R. Commons[2]
Doctoral studentsEdward Feigenbaum
Allen Newell
Richard Waldinger[3]
John Muth
William F. Pounds
Oliver E. Williamson
Saras Sarasvathy
David Bree[4]

Herbert Alexander Simon (June 15, 1916 – February 9, 2001) was an American scholar whose work also influenced the fields of computer science, economics, and cognitive psychology. His primary research interest was decision-making within organizations and he is best known for the theories of "bounded rationality" and "satisficing".[6][7] He received the Turing Award in 1975 and the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1978.[8][9] His research was noted for its interdisciplinary nature, spanning the fields of cognitive science, computer science, public administration, management, and political science.[10] He was at Carnegie Mellon University for most of his career, from 1949 to 2001,[11] where he helped found the Carnegie Mellon School of Computer Science, one of the first such departments in the world.

Notably, Simon was among the pioneers of several modern-day scientific domains such as artificial intelligence, information processing, decision-making, problem-solving, organization theory, and complex systems. He was among the earliest to analyze the architecture of complexity and to propose a preferential attachment mechanism to explain power law distributions.[12][13]

  1. ^ Herbert Simon, "Autobiography", in Nobel Lectures, Economics 1969–1980, Editor Assar Lindbeck, World Scientific Publishing Co., Singapore, 1992.
  2. ^ Forest, Joelle, "John R. Commons and Herbert A. Simon on the Concept of Rationality", Journal of Economic Issues Vol. XXXV, 3 (2001), pp. 591–605
  3. ^ "Herbert Alexander Simon". AI Genealogy Project. Archived from the original on April 30, 2012. Retrieved March 15, 2012.
  4. ^ https://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~dbree/fullcv.pdf. {{cite web}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)
  5. ^ "Dorothea Simon Obituary - Pittsburgh, PA - Post-Gazette.com". Post-Gazette.com. Retrieved August 8, 2015.
  6. ^ "Guru: Herbert Simon". The Economist. March 20, 2009. Retrieved February 13, 2018.
  7. ^ Artinger, Florian M.; Gigerenzer, Gerd; Jacobs, Perke (2022). "Satisficing: Integrating Two Traditions". Journal of Economic Literature. 60 (2): 598–635. doi:10.1257/jel.20201396. hdl:21.11116/0000-0007-5C2A-4. ISSN 0022-0515. S2CID 249320959.
  8. ^ Heyck, Hunter. "Herbert A. Simon - A.M. Turing Award Laureate". amturing.acm.org.
  9. ^ "The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 1978". NobelPrize.org.
  10. ^ Edward Feigenbaum (2001). "Herbert A. Simon, 1916-2001". Science. 291 (5511): 2107. doi:10.1126/science.1060171. S2CID 180480666. Studies and models of decision-making are the themes that unify most of Simon's contributions.
  11. ^ Simon, Herbert A. (1978). Assar Lindbeck (ed.). Nobel Lectures, Economics 1969–1980. Singapore: World Scientific Publishing Co. Retrieved May 22, 2012.
  12. ^ Simon, H. A., 1955, Biometrika 42, 425.
  13. ^ B. Mandelbrot, "A Note on a Class of Skew Distribution Functions, Analysis and Critique of a Paper by H. Simon", Information and Control, 2 (1959), p. 90