Economics
Herbert Simon
Economist and AI pioneer, Nobel Prize in Economics 1978 and Turing Award 1975
Born 1916 · Died 2001
Photo: Rochester Institute of Technology · Public domain
«A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.»
Herbert Simon showed that people do not optimise but satisfice, choosing the first option that is good enough, an idea that reshaped economics. With Allen Newell he also built some of the first programs that could reason, making him a founder of artificial intelligence.
Key achievements
- Nobel Prize in Economics, 1978, for decision-making in organisations
- Turing Award, 1975, with Allen Newell
Universities
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Professor from 1949 until his death, where he helped found both the business school's research tradition and the computer science department.
Facts
- He is one of very few people to hold both the Nobel Prize in Economics and the Turing Award, computing's highest honour.
- His Logic Theorist program of 1956 proved theorems from Principia Mathematica, and found a proof more elegant than the original.
- He coined the term bounded rationality, now standard in economics, psychology and the design of algorithms.