3 Nobel laureates to honor UCI’s Duncan Luce January 25th, 2008 by grobbins

Three recent winners of the Nobel Prize in economics will visit UC Irvine today and Saturday to honor mathematician-psychologist Duncan Luce, who shook the economics world 50 years ago with a landmark book on game theory.

Game theory is the mathematical study of conflict and interaction among people. Luce and his co-author, Howard Raiffa, laid out some of the most basic principles and insights about the field in their book, “Games and Decisions: Introductions and Critical Survey.”

That book, and seminal equations Luce later wrote that helped explain and predict a wide range of human behavior, including decision-making involving risk, earned him the National Medal of Science, which he received from President Bush in 2005. (See photo.)

UCI mathematican Don Saari put together a celebratory conference to honor both Luce and Raiffa, and he recruited some of the world’s best-known economic scientists. It’s one of the largest such gatherings since UCI hosted 17 Nobel laureates in October 1996.

“Luce and Raiffa’s book has been tremendously influential and we wanted to honor them,” said Saari, a member of the National Academy of Sciences.

Luce said Thursday night, “This is obviously very flattering, and it’s amazing that the book is sufficiently alive that people would want to honor it.”

The visitors scheduled to attended the celebratory conference include:

Thomas Schelling, who won the 2005 Nobel in economics for his research on game theory

Roger Myerson and Eric Maskin, who shared the 2007 Nobel in economics for their work in design theory.

Ken Binmore, one of the founders of the modern economic theory of bargaining;

Lloyd Shapley, an emeritus professor at UCLA who is considered to be a giant in mathematical economics and game theory. Avinash Dixit, a Princeton economist who also is a leading voice in game theory;

Robert B. Wilson, an emeritus professor of economics at Stanford and an expert on market design and pricing.Games and decisions: introduction and critical survey.