Biography - Herbert A. Simon

(1916 - 2001)

Update May 2007: New Book
Augier, Mie and March, James
Models of a Man: Essays in Memory of Herbet A. Simon (HB 119.S47M63 2004)

Update: Herbert A. Simon, the Nobel-prize-winning intellectual and polymath died in Pittsburgh on February 9, 2001. Many obituaries will be found shortly after that time and a few good examples are provided here: Washington Post, Feb.11, 2001, p.C06; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Feb.13, 2001, p.A20 and The Economist, Feb.24, 2001 (the first 2 sources are found on Lexis/Nexis, the last one on ProQuest or in print in the Business Library). The purpose of this notice is to direct you to some of the works by and about Simon that are available in the Western Libraries and to provide you with some brief biographical information. For a thoughtful appraisal of Simon and his contributions see: " A Reflection on Herbert Simon: A Satisficing Search for Significance," by Hal G. Rainey in Administration and Society, Vol.33, No.5, November 2001, p.497.

Simon was born in Milwaukee, the son of an immigrant German engineer and inventor. His mother was an accomplished pianist and Simon was raised in an environment that encouraged learning and doing in a variety of fields. He majored in political science at the University of Chicago, but was also interested in cognitive psychology and artificial intelligence, as well as economics and decision making. In the late 1940s he moved to the Carnegie Institute of Technology which was just establishing a Graduate School of Industrial Administration (his dissertation became Administrative Behavior). Apart from his interest in artificial intelligence, Simon is most often associated with the phrase "bounded rationality" which indicates that decision making is subject to limitations and acknowledges that we live in a 'satisficing' world ( a neologism coined from 'satisfy' and 'suffice'.) He won the Nobel Prize for Economics in 1978, the National Science Medal in 1986 and published over 600 articles on a variety of subjects. For additional background see Simon's biography, noted below: Models of My Life.

Books by Herbert Simon in the Western Libraries:

Administrative Behavior: A Study of Decision-Making Processes in Administrative Organizations.
BUS HD31.S55 1997.
This is the 4th edition. We have many others.
An Empirically Based Microeconomics.
DBW HB172.S55 1997.
The Sciences of the Artificial.
DBW Q175.S54 1996.
Organizations.
DBW HD31.M29 1993.
Protocol analysis Verbal Reports as Data.
DBW BF455.E68 1993.
Economics, Bounded Rationality and the Cognitive Revolution.
DBW HD30.23.E324 1992.
Models of my Life.
DBW HB119.S47A3 1991.
Reason in Human Affairs.
DBW B833.S56 1983.
Models of Bounded Rationality.
DBW HB171.S5633.
The 1979 Founders Symposium, Institute for Social Research, Honoring George Katona.
DBW HB74.P8N56 1980.
Models of Thought.
DBW BF455S525.
The New Science of Management Decision.
RDL HD69.D4S49 1977.
Skew Distributions and the Sizes of Business Firms.
BUS HD69.S5I45 1977.
Models of Discovery: And Other Topics in the Methods of Science.
DBW Q175.B67 v.54.
Human Problem Solving.
RDL/BUS/TAY BF441.N47 1972.
Representation and Meaning; Experiments with Information Processing Systems.
TAY Q335.S5 1972.
The Shape of Automation for Men and Management.
BUS/RDL HD31.S556 1965.
Essays on the Structure of Social Science Models.
DBW H61.A67 1963.
Public Administration.
BUS/DBW JF1351.S59 1962.
Organizations.
BUS/RDL/DBW HD31.M315o 1958.
Models of Man; Social and Rational; Mathematical Essays of Rational Human Behavior in a Social Setting.
RDL H33.S59 1957.
Centralization vs. Decentralization in Organizing the Controller's Department: A Research Study and Report Prepared for Controllership Foundation, Inc.
BUS HF5550.C333 1954.

Additional Material By or About Simon in the Western Libraries:

Handbook of Organization Theory and Management: The Philosophical Approach. BUS HD2326.H283 1998.
Organizational Decision Making. DBW HD30.23.O744 1997.
Diagrammatic Reasoning: Cognitive and Computational Perspectives. TAY QA76.9.A96D53 1995.
The Philosophy of Economics: An Anthology. DBW HB71.P53 1994.
AI: The Tumultuous History of the Search for Artificial Intelligence. TAY Q335.C66 1993.
The Nobel Prize Economics Lectures: A Cross Section of Current Thinking. DBW HB171.Z34 1992.
Public Administration, History and Theory in Contemporary Perspective. DBW JF1351.P817 1982.

Selected Articles Authored or Co-Authored by Herbert Simon

Simon wrote hundreds of articles on a variety of subjects. The ones below were taken from the database Proquest-ABI/Inform Global and written over the last 30 years. Additional articles will be found on other databases (EconLit and JSTOR, for example) or by using the bibliographies in the works provided below.

"A Study of How Individuals Solve Complex and Ill- Structured Problems", Policy Sciences, Sep. 1999, Vol.32, Iss.3, p.225.
"Studies of scientific discovery: Complementary approaches and convergent finding", Psychological Bulletin, Sep 1999; Vol. 125, Iss.5; pg.524, 20pgs.
"Rationality Gone Awry? Decision making Inconsistent with Economic and Financial Theory", Business Economics, Jul. 1999; Vol.34, Iss.3; pg.93, 2pgs.
"Information 101; It's not what you know. It's how you know It", The Journal for Quality and Participation, Jul/Aug. 1998; Vol.21, Iss.4; pg. 30, 4pgs.
"Perceiving and managing business risks: Differences between entrepreneurs and bankers", Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Jan 1998; Vol.33, Iss.2; pg.207, 19pgs. (not available in the WLs).
"Why public administration?", Public Administration Review, Jan/Feb 1998; Vol.58, Iss.1; pg.II, 1pg.
"Al lessons", Association for Computing Machinery. Communications of the ACM, Aug. 1997; Vol.40, Iss.8; pg.23, 3pgs.
"Applications of machine learning and rule induction",Association for Computing Machinery. Communications of the ACM, Nov. 1995; Vol.38, Iss.11; pg.55, 10pgs.
"Guest editorial", Public Administration Review, Sep 1995; Vol.55, Iss.5; pg.404, 2pgs.
"George Leland Bach", Selections, Spring 1995; Vol.11, Iss.3; pg. 15, 1pg.
"Altruism and economics", The American Economic Review, May 1993; Vol.83, Iss.2; pg.156, 6pgs.
"Strategy and organizational evolution", Strategic Management Journal, Winter 1993; Vol.14; pg.131, 12pgs.
"Book Reviews - Organization Theory: From Chester Barnard to the Present and Beyond edited by Oliver E. Williamson", Journal of Economic Literature, Sep 1992; Vol.30, iss.3; pg.1503.
"Altruism and economics", Eastern Economic Journal, Winter 1992; Vol.18, Iss.1; pg.73, 11pgs.
"Prediction And Prescription In Systems Modeling", Operations Research, Jan/Feb 1990; Vol. 38, Iss.1; pg.7, 6pgs.
"The Experts in Your Midst", Harvard Business Review, Boston; Jan/Feb 1989; Vol.67, Iss.1; pg.120, 5pgs.
"Causal Ordering. Comparative Statistics, and Near Decomposability", Journal of Econometrics, Sep/Oct 1988; Vol.39, Iss.1,2; pg.149, 24pgs.
"Why Economists Disagree: Disagreement and Reform in Economic Science- Comments on Simon", Journal of Business Administration, 1988/1989; Vol.18, Iss.1,2; pg.1,26 pgs.
"Decision Making and Problem Solving", Interfaces, Sep/Oct 1987; Vol. 17, Iss. 5; pg. 11, 21pgs.
"Two Heads Are Better Than One; The Collaboration Between Al and OR", Interfaces, Jul/Aug 1987; Vol.17, Iss.4; pg,8, 8pgs.
"Making Management Decisions: The Role Of Instuition And Emot", The Academy of Management Executive, Feb 1987; Vol.1, Iss.1; pg.57, 8pgs.
"Rationalilty In Psychology and Economics/The Psychology and Economics Conference Handbook: Comments on Simon, on Einhorn and Hogarth, and on Tverskv and Kahneman", The Journal of Business, Oct 1986; Vol.59, Iss.4; pg.S209, 22pgs.
"Whether Software Engineering Needs to Be Artificially Intelligent", Ieee Transactions On Software Engineering, Jul 1986; Vol.SE12, Iss.7; pg.726, 7pgs.
"How Managers Express Their Creativity", Across The Board, Mar 1986; Vol.23, Iss.3; pg.11, 6pgs.
"My Llfe Philosophy", American Economist, Spring 1985; Vol 29, Iss 1; pg 15, 6pgs.
"What Is Industrial Democracy?", Challenge, Jan/Feb 1983; Vol.25, Iss.6; pg.30, 10pgs.
"The Rural-Urban Population Balance Again", Regional Science And Urban Economics, Nov 1982; Vol.12, Iss.4; pg.599, 8pgs.
"On How to Decide What to Do", Bell Journal of Economics, Autumn 1978; Vol.9, Iss.2; pg.494.
"Rationality as process and as product of thought", The American Economic Review, May 1978; Vol.68, Iss.2; pg.1.
"COMPUTER SCIENCE AS EMPIRICAL INQUIRY - SYMBOLS AND SEARCH", Association for Computing Machinery. Commnunications of the ACM, MAR. 1976; Vol.19, Iss.3; pg.113.
"INTERPRETATIONS OF DEPARTURES FROM THE PARETO CURVE FIRM-SIZE DISTRIBUTION", The Journal of Political Economy, MAR/APR 1974; Vol.82, Iss.2, pg.315.
"TECHNOLOGY AND ENVIRONMENT", Management Science, JUNE 73; Vol.19, Iss.10; pg.1110.

Selected Web Sites

The History of Economic Thought Website.
This is a very good site with a bibliography and many other links.
The Nobel Site.
Provides a good autobiographical profile.

There are 2 pages for Simon at Carnegie Mellon(indicating his eclecticism):
Graduate School of Industrial Administration.
The Psychology Department.