Herbert Simon
Facts
Photo from the Nobel Foundation archive.
Herbert A. Simon
The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 1978
Born: 15 June 1916, Milwaukee, WI, USA
Died: 9 February 2001, Pittsburgh, PA, USA
Affiliation at the time of the award: Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, USA
Prize motivation: “for his pioneering research into the decision-making process within economic organizations”
Prize share: 1/1
Life
Herbert Simon was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in the United States. His mother was a pianist and his father an electrical engineer who had migrated from Germany. His maternal uncle, an economist, sparked his interest in the social sciences. He first studied at the University of Chicago and was awarded a PhD in political science in 1943. After working at the University of California, Berkeley, and then at Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, Simon moved to Carnegie Mellon University in 1949. Simon was married with three children.
Work
Herbert Simon combined different scientific disciplines and considered new factors in economic theories. Established economic theories held that enterprises and entrepreneurs all acted in completely rational ways, with the maximization of their own profit as their only goal. In contrast, Simon held that when making choices all people deviate from the strictly rational, and described companies as adaptable systems, with physical, personal, and social components. Through these perspectives, he was able to write about decision-making processes in modern society in an entirely new way.
Nobel Prizes and laureates
Six prizes were awarded for achievements that have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind. The 12 laureates' work and discoveries range from proteins' structures and machine learning to fighting for a world free of nuclear weapons.
See them all presented here.
