I was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on June 15, 1916. My father, an electrical engineer, had come to the United States in 1903 after earning his engineering diploma at the Technische Hochschule of Darmstadt, Germany. He was an inventor and designer of electrical control gear, later also a patent...

Lecture to the memory of Alfred Nobel, December 8, 1978

[fre] La connaissance concerne l'économie sous de multiples points de vue : les rétributions liées aux découvertes, les coûts de stockage et de récupération, la propriété des connaissances et les institutions sociales assurant la préservation et la distribution des connaissances. En...

The solution of today's major social problems will come from more and better technology--not from less technology. For technology is just another name for human knowledge. We need to deepen our scientific knowledge, broaden our repertory of alternatives, and strengthen our technology of decision...

Bavelas, Smith and Leavitt (Bavelas, A. 1950. Communication patterns in task-oriented groups. J. Acoustical Soc. Amer. 22 725-730.) have posed the problem: what effect do communication patterns have upon the operation of groups? To study this problem they designed a laboratory situation that is...

The decision problems involved in setting the aggregate production rate of a factory and setting the size of its work force are frequently both complex and difficult. The quality of these decisions can be of great importance to the profitability of an individual company, and when viewed on a...

Applications of mathematics to the social and behavioral sciences have burgeoned since the Second World War. Classical techniques of analysis have found wide application, particularly in economics; and in recent years applications of combinatorial mathematics have become increasingly common....