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Lloyd Shapley

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Mathematician

The Resume

    (June 2, 1923-March 12, 2016)
    Born in Cambridge, Massachusetts
    Contributor to game theory
    Developed formulas for efficiently matching supply and demand in transactions that do not involve money
    Co-recipient of the Nobel Prize in Economics (2012)
    Died of complications from a fractured hip

Why he might be annoying:

    During World War II, he was stationed at a secret post, but revealed his location to his family by encoding messages in his letters home.
    His first paper on game theory was rejected by two journals for being ‘too simple.’
    He said about using his theories in real-life situations, ‘If there’s an interesting application, well, maybe someone else can do it.’
    After winning the Nobel Prize, he said, ‘I consider myself a mathematician, and the award is for economics. I never, never in my life took a course in economics.’

Why he might not be annoying:

    He served with an Army Air Forces meteorological unit in China during World War II.
    He earned a bronze star for breaking the Soviet’s weather code. (Breaking the code gave the US an earlier start on determining if conditions would be right for bombing Japan, since the weather fronts heading to Japan first crossed Siberia.)
    As a graduate student at Princeton, he befriended fellow game theorist (and fellow future Nobel Prize winner) John Forbes Nash; his description of Nash possessing ‘a keen, beautiful, logical mind’ inspired the title ‘A Beautiful Mind’ for Sylvia Nasar’s biography of Nash and its Oscar-winning film adaptation.
    His ‘too simple’ paper outlined the Gale-Shapley algorithm, which became ‘the workhorse of matching theory’ and the main reason he won the Nobel Prize.

Credit: C. Fishel


Featured in the following Annoying Collections:

Year In Review:

    In 2023, Out of 2 Votes: 0% Annoying
    In 2022, Out of 2 Votes: 50.0% Annoying
    In 2021, Out of 9 Votes: 77.78% Annoying
    In 2020, Out of 2 Votes: 100% Annoying
    In 2019, Out of 3 Votes: 33.33% Annoying
    In 2018, Out of 1 Votes: 100% Annoying
    In 2017, Out of 2 Votes: 50.0% Annoying
    In 2016, Out of 23 Votes: 52.17% Annoying