Herbert (Herb) A. Simon

Herb Simon was, for 52 years, a Carnegie Mellon University living legend, a visionary, a giant who left his mark on every field he touched, including computer science, economics, psychology, and political science.

The thread running through his body of work was human decision-making and problem-solving processes and the implications of these processes for social institutions.

Simon joined the CMU faculty in 1949 to help establish the Tepper School of Business and develop a rigorous, new business education curriculum stressing analytical decision-making.

He was instrumental in the formation of several additional schools and departments, including the School of Computer Science and the Psychology Department, with its internationally renowned cognitive science group that redefined the psychology of human cognition.

Along with Allen Newell, Simon wrote a computer program that proved theorems whose calculations had previously taken 10 years of work by hand. This ‘thinking machine’ marked the founding of artificial intelligence.

Simon earned both his undergraduate degree and Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in political science, in 1936 and 1943, respectively. The Richard King Mellon University Professor of Computer Science and Psychology, he served as a university trustee and was the author of 27 books.

His numerous honors, the highest in their fields, included the A.M. Turing Award, 1986 National Medal of Science, Von Neumann Theory Prize, and the 1978 Nobel Prize in Economics.