Person: Karlin, Samuel

Samuel Karlin was a Polish-born American mathematician who worked in game theory and its application in statistics and economics.

Karlin was awarded his doctorate in 1947 for his thesis Independent Functions.
This interest had arisen through his years at Princeton when he had been influenced by John von Neumann who published his classic text Theory of Games and Economic Behaviour, written with Oskar Morgenstern, at about the time Karlin arrived at Princeton.
Karlin published papers such as Solutions of discrete, two-person games; Polynomial games; and Games with continuous, convex pay-off all in 1950.
Total positivity is a subject in which Karlin played a major role.
Karlin received many honours throughout his career including a lifetime achievement award from the National Academy of Sciences in 1973, the John von Neumann Theory Prize in 1987, and the National Medal of Science in 1989.
As a tribute to this breadth and vitality, we award Samuel Karlin the John von Neumann Theory Prize.
As this quote indicates, Karlin moved towards applying mathematical techniques in biology in the last portion of his career.
We should note that the papers and books we have listed form a very small fraction of Karlin's total output since he published over 450 works.
Perhaps we should end with a quotation from Karlin.

Born 8 June 1924, Janówa ?, Poland. Died 18 December 2007, Palo Alto, California, USA.

View full biography at MacTutor

Origin Poland

Thank you to the contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0!

O’Connor, John J; Robertson, Edmund F: MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive