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MEET THE PERSON
HERBERT A. SIMON: AN INTRODUCTION
Professor Herbert A. Simon is a key figure in the history of 20th-century social sciences, and he has made important contributions to organization theory, political science, computer science, psychology, management and economics, as well as other fields. The intellectual effects of his work are indisputable; he pioneered research on bounded rationality and satisficing in economics; helped establishing the field of organization theory; and greatly advanced our understanding of computers, psychological processes, and other fields. Despite working in such seemingly different fields, there is a remarkable continuity in Professor Simon's work; Simon was always interested in how limited rational human beings make decisions and solve problems. Particularly important to Simon has been the computational and informational limits to human rationality. From his collaboration with James March (and their classic work, Organizations [March & Simon, 1958]) and his important contributions to the behavioral analysis of rational choice (Simon, 1955, 1956), Simon appealed to psychology and cognitive science to understand how people make decisions under the influence of bounded rationality. He also helped establish the Graduate School of Industrial Administration at Carnegie Mellon University, which later became a model for U.S. business schools. As an introduction to the interview below, I will summarize some of Simon's significant ideas that are discussed in the interview.
Born in 1916 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Professor Simon was educated in political science at the University of Chicago (B.A., 1936; Ph.D., 1943). He has held research and faculty positions at the University of California (Berkeley); the Illinois Institute of Technology; and since 1949, Carnegie Mellon University, where he was Richard King Mellon University Professor of computer science and psychology until his recent death. Simon was the winner of many prestigious awards, such as the A. M. Turing Award (1975) and the Alfred Nobel Memorial Prize in economic sciences (1978). His most well-known writings include Administrative Behavior (Simon, 1947), Organizations (March & Simon, 1958), Human Problem Solving (Newell & Simon, 1972), Models of Bounded Rationality (Simon, 1982), and the autobiography Models of My Life (Simon, 1991). In addition to his research publications, Simon held important political positions in professional associations, which contributed to his impact on the social sciences. Simon was the first social scientist to...