Harold W. Kuhn

Harold William Kuhn (July 29, 1925 – July 2, 2014) was an American mathematician who studied game theory. He won the 1980 John von Neumann Theory Prize jointly with David Gale and Albert W. Tucker. A former Professor Emeritus of Mathematics at Princeton University, he is known for the Karush–Kuhn–Tucker conditions, for Kuhn's theorem, and for developing Kuhn poker. He described the Hungarian method for the assignment problem, but a paper by Carl Gustav Jacobi, published posthumously in 1890 in Latin, was later discovered that had described the Hungarian method a century before Kuhn.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref><ref>Harold W. Kuhn, The Hungarian Method for the Assignment Problem and how Jacobi beat me by 100 Years, Seminar, Concordia University, September 12, 2006</ref>

LifeEdit

Kuhn was born in Santa Monica in 1925.<ref>Siegfried Gottwald, Hans J. Ilgauds, Karl H. Schlote (Hrsg.): Lexikon bedeutender Mathematiker. Verlag Harri Thun, Frankfurt a. M. 1990 Template:ISBN</ref> He is known for his association with John Forbes Nash, as a fellow graduate student, a lifelong friend and colleague, and a key figure in getting Nash the attention of the Nobel Prize committee that led to Nash's 1994 Nobel Prize in Economics.<ref>The Times Higher Education Supplement: The autumnal sadness of the Princeton ghost</ref> Kuhn and Nash both had long associations and collaborations with Albert W. Tucker, who was Nash's dissertation advisor. Kuhn co-edited The Essential John Nash,<ref>The Essential John Nash, edited by Harold W. Kuhn & Sylvia Nasar, Princeton University Press</ref> and is credited as the mathematics consultant in the 2001 movie adaptation of Nash's life, A Beautiful Mind.<ref>Harold Kuhn, consultant: Princeton</ref>

In 1949, he married Estelle Henkin, sister of logician Leon Henkin. His oldest son was oral historian Clifford Kuhn (1952-2015), an associate professor at Georgia State University noted for his scholarship on the American South. Another son, Nicholas Kuhn, is a professor of mathematics at the University of Virginia.<ref>Nick Kuhn, Professor of Mathematics, Department of Mathematics, University of Virginia Template:Webarchive</ref> His youngest son, Jonathan Kuhn, is Director of Art and Antiquities for the New York City Department of Parks & Recreation.

Kuhn died on July 2, 2014.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Template:Cite journal
- Template:Cite journal
Owen, Guillermo. (2004) "IFORS' Operational Research Hall of Fame Harold W. Kuhn" International Transactions in Operational Research 11 (6), 715–718. {{#invoke:doi|main}}.
Kuhn, H.W. Classics in Game Theory. (Princeton University Press, 1997). Template:ISBN.
Kuhn, H.W. Linear Inequalities and Related Systems (AM-38) (Princeton University Press, 1956). Template:ISBN.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>
Kuhn, H.W. Contributions to the Theory of Games, I (AM-24). (Princeton University Press, 1950). Template:ISBN.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>
Kuhn, H.W. Contributions to the Theory of Games, II (AM-28) (Princeton University Press, 1953). Template:ISBN.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>
Kuhn, H.W. Lectures on the Theory of Games. (Princeton University Press, 2003). Template:ISBN.
Kuhn, H.W. and Nasar, Sylvia, editors. The Essential John Nash. (Princeton University Press, 2001). Template:ISBN.