Shapley, Lloyd Stowell

Shapley, Lloyd Stowell shăpˈlē [key], 1923–2016, American mathematician and economist, b. Cambridge, Mass., Ph.D Princeton, 1953; son of Harlow Shapley. He worked at the RAND Corp. from 1954 to 1981 as a research mathematician and then was an economics and mathematics professor at the Univ. of California, Los Angeles (emeritus from 2001). One of the most important investigators in game theory (see games, theory of), he made many significant contributions to the field, focusing on the areas of noncooperative market models, political games, cost allocation, and organization theory. In cooperative game theory, he came up with a solution to how the benefits of cooperation could be equitably divided, depending on each participant's contribution, a concept now known as Shapley value. His work with David Gale on how to match two groups of people in a way that produces the most stable matchings ultimately had practical applications in the work of economist Alvin Roth. In 2012 he and Roth were jointly awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for their work on matching theory and market design.

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