Anatol Rapoport facts for kids
Anatol Rapoport (born May 22, 1911 – died January 20, 2007) was an American mathematical psychologist. He was very important in developing ideas about how systems work, like how different parts of something connect and influence each other. He also used math to study biology and how people interact in groups. He even looked at how diseases spread using mathematical models.
Biography
Anatol Rapoport was born in a town called Lozova, which was part of Russia at the time, but is now in Ukraine. In 1922, when he was 11, he moved to the United States and later became an American citizen.
He first studied music in Chicago and then went to Vienna, Austria, to learn piano, conducting, and how to write music. He studied there from 1929 to 1934. But because of the rise of Nazism in Europe, it became very hard for him to have a career as a pianist.
So, he changed his focus to mathematics. He earned his Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Chicago in 1941. During World War II, he joined the U.S. Army Air Forces and served in places like Alaska and India.
After the war, from 1947 to 1954, he worked at the University of Chicago, studying how math could be used in biology. He also wrote his first book, Science and the Goals of Man, in 1950. He then spent a year at Stanford University, a famous research center.
From 1955 to 1970, Rapoport was a professor at the University of Michigan. He taught mathematical biology and was a founding member of the Mental Health Research Institute there. In 1970, during the Vietnam War, he moved to Toronto, Canada. He wanted to live in a country that was not involved in major world conflicts. He became a professor of mathematics and psychology at the University of Toronto until 1979. He continued to teach there until 2000.
In 1984, he helped start an organization called Science for Peace. He was also a co-founder of the Society for General Systems Research in 1954, which studies how different systems work. He became the president of this society in 1965.
Anatol Rapoport passed away in Toronto from pneumonia. He was survived by his wife, Gwen, and his three children, Anya, Alexander, and Anthony.
Work
Rapoport was a very smart person who worked in many different fields. He used his math skills and understanding of people to study things like game theory, how social networks connect people, and how language affects our thoughts.
He also used his knowledge to study conflicts, especially about nuclear disarmament and how countries interact. He wrote a book about his life called Certainties and Doubts: A Philosophy of Life in 2001.
A famous philosopher and physicist named Mario Bunge called Rapoport a "polymath," which means someone who knows a lot about many different subjects. Bunge liked Rapoport's work because it used math to solve real-life problems and avoided confusing language.
Game Theory and Cooperation
Anatol Rapoport had a very flexible mind. He worked in mathematics, psychology, biology, and even peace studies. For example, he was one of the first to create models for how living things like parasites and hosts interact. This helped him understand conflict and cooperation, which became a big part of his life's work.
He wrote many books and over 300 articles. Two of his well-known books are "Two-Person Game Theory" (1966) and "N-Person Game Theory" (1970). In these books, he looked at situations where more than two groups have different goals, like in wars, diplomacy, or even games like poker. His work led him to study peace, and he wrote books like The Origins of Violence (1989) and Peace, An Idea Whose Time Has Come (1993).
In the 1980s, Rapoport won a computer competition. This competition was based on a famous book called The Evolution of Cooperation by Robert Axelrod. The goal was to see how cooperation could develop over time. Different computer programs played a game called the prisoner's dilemma against each other.
Rapoport's winning program was called Tit-for-Tat. It was very simple, with only four lines of code! Here's how it worked:
- It would always start by cooperating with the other player.
- After that, it would do exactly what the other player did in the previous turn.
- If the other player was selfish and didn't cooperate, Tit-for-Tat would also not cooperate, but only for one turn.
- If the other player cooperated, Tit-for-Tat would keep cooperating.
This simple program was very effective. It showed the other player the benefits of cooperating quickly. It even made some thinkers suggest that this "Tit-for-Tat" idea could be a good rule for how people should act in real life.
His children shared that he was a good chess player, but not so good at poker. This was because he would accidentally show what cards he had without meaning to!
Working for Peace
According to Thomas Homer-Dixon, Rapoport became strongly against war soon after World War II. He felt that military values were wrong. He was a main organizer of the first "teach-ins" against the Vietnam War at the University of Michigan. These teach-ins were public discussions and protests that quickly spread across North America.
At one teach-in, he said, "By fighting the war against Vietnam, the United States has started a war against humanity... We will not win this war." He believed in ending the idea of war itself, rather than being a complete pacifist (someone who is against all violence). He once said, "I'm for killing the institution of war." In 1968, he signed a pledge with other writers and editors to refuse to pay taxes as a protest against the Vietnam War.
Rapoport returned to the University of Toronto to help start the Peace and Conflict Studies program. He worked with others to make peace studies a serious academic subject. He used a strong, interdisciplinary approach, combining math, politics, psychology, philosophy, science, and sociology. When he started, there was only one professor (him, unpaid) and twelve students. By 2007, the program had grown to three paid professors and ninety students.
His students remember him as an inspiring and engaging professor. They said he captured their attention with his wide knowledge, passion, good humor, kindness, and lively teaching style.
In 1981, Rapoport also helped create the international organization Science for Peace. In the 1980s, he was recognized for his work in helping to prevent nuclear conflict using his game theory models. He won the Lenz International Peace Research Prize in 1976. He also served on the editorial board of the Journal of Environmental Peace.
See also
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Anatol Rapoport
