Lloyd Shapley GS '53, mathematician and Nobel Laureate, passes away

Nobel Laureate and mathematician Lloyd Stowell ShapleyGS '53passed away of natural causes on Saturday, March 12, at the age of 92 in Tucson, Arizona.

Shapley, who resided in Pacific Palisades, served as emeritus professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. He was honored with a shared 2012 Nobel Prize in Economic Science for his work on market design and matching theory.

Shapley's legacy is found both in game theory, which attempts to explain the decisions that competitors make in situations of strategic thinking, and the “Shapley value,” which shows the benefits of how cooperation can be proportionally divided among participants based on their relative contribution.

Shapley briefly taught at the University's math department as a Fine Instructor in the 1950s and was greatly respected in the University community, according to Joseph Kohn GS '56,professor in mathematics at the University, .

Kohn explained that he remembers Shapley from his time as a graduate student at the University in the 1950s.

“In the 1950s, one of the main features of graduate study in mathematics at Princeton was the daily afternoon tea. This featured lively discussions of mathematical problems, theories and games," he said, noting that Shapley was an impressive participant in these teas.

"I was a graduate student at the time and learned a lot from him, both through these informal gatherings and a number of brilliant lectures. Unfortunately, I did not have much contact with him, but I recall his insight, geniality and good humor with great pleasure,” Kohn noted.

Hale Trotter GS '56,math professor emeritus at the University, remembered how while he was a graduate student at the University, how he and some of his fellow graduate students played a game that Shapley co-invented a few times.

“I can testify that its design was brilliantly successful – though we never took it seriously enough to damage our friendship,” Trotter added.

This game was called “So Long, Sucker,” which Shapley co-invented in 1950 alongside John Nash GS '50, Mel Hausner GS '51 and Martin Shubik GS '53.

Neither Shubik nor Hausner responded to requests for comment.

“The game was designed so that the only way to win was through timely betrayal of others so that one had to first manage to persuade in order to cooperate,” Kohn remembered.

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Shapley was a mentor as well as close friend to Nash, a mathematician and Nobel Laureate who had schizophrenia.

Journalist Sylvia Nasar have attributedthat her 1998 biography of Mr. Nash, “A Beautiful Mind,” was inspired by a remark from Dr. Shapley. “He was obnoxious,” Nasar quoted Shapley of saying about Nash, in a New York Times article, “What redeemed him was a keen, beautiful, logical mind.”

Nasar declined to comment.

Shapley, who was studied mathematics at Harvard, left to join the Army Air Corps when World War II began. In addition to his life as a scholar, Shapley earned a Bronze Star for deciphering a Soviet weather code while he was assigned to a weather station at a secret air base in Western China that also intercepted broadcasts.

After the war, he earned a mathematics degreefrom Harvard and a doctorate from Princeton University.

Shapley worked at Rand Corporation,an American nonprofit global policy think tank originally formed by Douglas Aircraft Company to offer research and analysis to the United States Armed Forces before he joined the University faculty from 1948-50 and again from 1954-81, after he left the University. Hejoined the University of California, Los Angeles, in 1981.

“Dr. Shapley was one of the giants of game theory,” Gene Block, the chancellor of UCLA, said in astatement.

Shapley was born on June 2, 1923 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He was one of five children to Martha and Harlow Shapley, a noted astronomer at Harvard.

Shapley is survived by his sons, Peter and Christopher, as well as two grandchildren.

His family did not respond to request for comment.