Herbert Simon

Herbert Alexander Simon (15 June 1916 – 9 February 2001) was an American polymath whose research reshaped economics, cognitive psychology, computer science and public administration. He shared in the founding of artificial intelligence and won the 1978 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his theory of bounded rationality in organisations.

He was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to a German-Jewish electrical engineer and an American pianist. He took his bachelor's and doctoral degrees at the University of Chicago and joined Carnegie Institute of Technology, now Carnegie Mellon University, in 1949. He spent the rest of his working life there, helping to found both the Graduate School of Industrial Administration and the School of Computer Science.

His 1947 book Administrative Behavior argued that real decision-makers cannot maximise utility because of limits on information and computing power, and instead satisfice, choosing options that are good enough. With Allen Newell and J. C. Shaw he wrote the Logic Theorist in 1956 and the General Problem Solver in 1957, programs that he and Newell described as the first artificial intelligences. He also helped formulate the physical-symbol-system hypothesis.

His later books included The Sciences of the Artificial in 1969 and the autobiography Models of My Life in 1991. He won the Turing Award in 1975, the National Medal of Science in 1986 and the von Neumann Theory Prize in 1988. He died in Pittsburgh at the age of 84.

The given name Herbert comes from the Old Germanic Hariberht, combining hari meaning army with beraht meaning bright, so the sense is bright army. It was carried to Britain by Anglo-Saxon and later Norman settlers and revived in the Victorian era. Herbert Simon wore it through a research life of extraordinary range, and he is remembered as one of the founders of modern decision science and artificial intelligence.