Lloyd S. Shapley, who shared the 2012 Nobel Prize in economic sciences for developing the theoretical underpinnings of methods for matching people with limited resources, including organ donors with patients, students with schools and doctors with hospitals, died March 12 at a nursing home in Tucson. He was 92, The Washington Post reported.
A longtime researcher at the Rand Corp. think tank in Santa Monica, Calif., Dr. Shapley was at his death a professor emeritus of economics and mathematics at the University of California at Los Angeles. His son, Peter Shapley, confirmed the death and said the cause was complications from a broken hip.
Known as a major contributor to theoretical and mathematical economics, Dr. Shapley was regarded as one of the titans of game theory.
That branch of mathematics concerns itself with the conceptual underpinnings of the choices and interactions, conscious and unconscious, large and small, personal and institutional, that people make every day of their lives.
Game theory is an apt title for the field, because it implies the element of competition involved in the choices governing human lives and institutions; most choices involve or imply winning and losing, success and failure, satisfaction and discontent.
"Game theory, I think, was made for me, because I was always messing round with great big game-like models, the sort of thing that now they call 'Dungeons and Dragons,' " Dr. Shapley once said. "I've always enjoyed the mathematics of it."
There is no Nobel in mathematics. In 2012 Dr. Shapley shared the economics Nobel with Alvin E. Roth, then of Harvard University, for contributions that spanned mathematics and economics. Dr. Shapley contributed the mathematics. "I never, never in my life took a course in economics," he said.