Herbert Simon

Herbert Alexander Simon was the most important polymath of twentieth-century social science. His career spanned political science, economics, cognitive psychology, and computer science, and he made foundational contributions to each. His 1947 dissertation, Administrative Behavior, established behavioral organization theory. His 1955 paper 'A Behavioral Model of Rational Choice' introduced bounded rationality and dismantled the foundation of neoclassical economics. His 1955 collaboration with Allen Newell produced the Logic Theorist, widely considered the first artificial intelligence program. His 1962 paper 'The Architecture of Complexity' articulated near-decomposability as the universal structural principle of complex systems. His 1969 Sciences of the Artificial established design as a rigorous form of knowledge. His 1971 paper on organizational information systems identified attention as the binding constraint of the information age. His 1972 Human Problem Solving, with Newell, founded cognitive science as a discipline. He won the Turing Award in 1975 for his contributions to AI and the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1978 for his