Anatol Rapoport

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Anatol Rapoport (born May 22 1911) is a Russian-born American Jewish mathematical psychologist. He is one of the founders of the general systems theory. He also contributed to mathematical biology and to the mathematical modeling of social interaction and stochastic models of contagion. He combined his mathematical expertise with psychological insights into the study of game theory and semantics. Rapoport extended these understandings into studies of psychological conflict, dealing with nuclear disarmament and international politics.

1 Early years
2 Systems theory
3 Selected works
4 External links

[edit] Early years

Rapoport was born in Lozavaya, Russia. In 1922, he came to the United States, and in 1928 he became a naturalized citizen. Rapoport initially trained as a musician to become a virtuoso pianist, performing masterpieces by classical composers. He studied piano conducting and composition at the Staatsakademie für Musik und darstellende Kunst in Vienna between the years 1929 and 1934. However, due to the rise of Nazism, he found it almost impossible to make a career as a pianist.

Later, he shifted his career into mathematics, getting a Ph.D. degree in mathematics under Nicholas Rashevsky at the University of Chicago in 1941. Afterwards, he served in the United States Air Force in Alaska and India during World War II. He returned to the United States and joined the Committee on Mathematical Biology at the University of Chicago (1947-1954), which was followed by his appointment at the Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences (Stanford, California). There he pioneered in the modeling of parasitism and symbiosis, researching cybernetic theory. This went on to give a conceptual basis for his lifelong work in conflict and cooperation.

[edit] Systems theory

In 1954, Anatol Rapoport founded the Society for General Systems Research, along with the researchers Ludwig von Bertalanffy, Ralph Gerard, and Kenneth Boulding. Since 1970 he has been the Professor (now emeritus) of Psychology and Mathematics at the University of Toronto, Canada. He is also the Professor for Peace and Conflict Studies.

In 1981, he co-founded the international NGO Science for Peace, and in 1984 he created the famous tit for tat strategy for the iterated prisoner's dilemma tournament held by Robert Axelrod that year. He was recognized in the 1980's for his contribution to world peace through nuclear conflict restraint via his game theoretic models of psychological conflict resolution.

[edit] Selected works

Rapoport, A. (1953). "Spread of information through a population with sociostructural bias: I. Assumption of transitivity." Bulletin of Mathematical Biophysics, 15, 523-533.
Rapoport, A., Horvath, W.J., (1960) "The theoretical channel capacity of a single neuron as determined by various coding systems". Information and Control, 3(4):335-350.
Gerard, R.W., Kluckhohn, C., Rapaport, A. (1956). "Biological and cultural evolution: Some analogies and explorations". Behavioral Science 1: 6-34.
Rapoport, A. (1963). "Mathematical models of social interaction". In R. D. Luce, R. R. Bush, & E. Galanter (Eds.), Handbook of Mathematical Psychology (Vol. II, pp. 493-579). New York, NY: John Wiley and Sons.
Rapoport, A. (1966). Two-person game theory: the essential ideas. Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press. ISBN 0-472-05015-X
Slobodkin L, Rapoport A. (1974). "An optimal strategy of evolution". Q. Rev. Biol. 49:181-200
Semantics, Crowell, 1975. Both general semantics along the lines of S.I. Hayakawa's Language in Thought and Action and more technical (mathematical and philosophical) material. A valuable survey.
Certainties and Doubts : A Philosophy of Life, Black Rose Books, Montreal, 2000. His autobiography. ISBN 1-55164-168-2.