From his early pursuits, Medal of Science winner Luce tested uncharted waters
作者: Richard Hébert / 7107次阅读 时间: 2012年1月03日
来源: APS 标签: DuncanLuce
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R. Duncan Luce

Q#t@$`Xw uaC0Good Choice: R. Duncan Luce chose mathematical behavioral science as a career despite the uncertainty of its future at the time.

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 From his early pursuits, Medal of Science winner Luce tested uncharted waters
-K![,P9],Wd2\0By Richard Hébert
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u Wc(d3Z+J"B,E0Luckily for science, as a child R. Duncan Luce  had astigmatism and parents who didn’t think much of art as a career  choice. Otherwise, he might have ended up a fighter pilot or an artist  instead of a pioneer in mathematical behavioral science. As it is,  during his career he has focused on constructing and testing  mathematical models of the commonalities among people.心理学空间#D6s r|V%];R&Q&v

 

;Z#{GsLV pcv*X-i0In a third-person biographical note written in 1989, Luce recalled  his youth in Scranton, Pennsylvania. “Airplanes and painting consumed  much time and attention but parental influence weighed strongly against  an art career, for which both the world and he can be thankful, and  astigmatism ruled out military flying.”

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XA t9A({\p/e1n0The future recipient of the National Science Medal started out with  good genes as a member of a family of risk-takers. His father was first  cousin to Time magazine founder Henry Luce, and he described a vague  memory of meeting the publisher’s father during childhood. The elder  Luce, who had been a missionary in China, “took out a big piece of heavy  paper and drew a bunch of Chinese characters and explained what they  were.”心理学空间!I#?/U6e qkVkU[

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Luce started his career in a field diametrically opposed to the  behavioral sciences. The future APS Fellow, Charter Member, William  James Fellow Award recipient, and Board Member (1989-1991) initially  planned a career in aeronautical engineering, his undergraduate degree  field. After graduating from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Luce  spent time in the Navy during World War II. Following the war, the Navy  paid his way through an accelerated engineering program. Luce then  completed midshipman school at Notre Dame, and Catapult and Arresting  Gear School in Philadelphia, where he learned how to guide airplane  launches and landings on aircraft carriers.

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This was followed by the shake-down cruise on the carrier USS  Kearsarge from Brooklyn to Guantanamo, Cuba. “I was essentially a  passenger,” recalled Luce, because the Navy thought it wiser to entrust  launches and landings to an experienced officer instead of “a very green  ensign.”心理学空间"by oE GP PHh

 

5p7o'F\v3l C|ju0After his discharge, Luce returned to MIT for graduate study in  applied mathematics, but was unsure of his goal. He knew he didn’t want  to do physical science applications or be a pure mathematician.  “Economics was one possibility,” he said. “The other was psychology. I  didn’t know very much about either.”

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Through a room- mate, Luce met social psychologist Leon Festinger,  who introduced him to Alex Bavelas, who in turn invited him to join his  social networks laboratory after Luce received his PhD in 1950. Luce  faced what he termed “a major career choice” — teaching in a math  department with minor interest in behavioral science, or putting his  math skills to use in behavioral sciences. He gambled on the latter and  joined Bavelas’ lab.

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s/FQ N(~4o b.u0That choice, he said, started an “uneasy nine years.” Mathematical  behavioral science was still in its infancy. “There were pockets of it,  but it wasn’t a strong discipline. It wasn’t obvious this was going to  work. It was well within possibility that I wasn’t going to be able to  do anything. I didn’t know how good I might be. It’s hard to be very  self-confident at that age.” He was 25.心理学空间 it4zo5kSOd@

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Much of the early work in mathematical behavioral science grew out of  wartime interdisciplinary collaborations, and much of that went on in  Cambridge, Massachusetts, including applications for information theory,  cybernetics, and social networks. “It was,” Luce recalled, “a very,  very lively place.”心理学空间3eJ7]'Y|hI.I

 

sj.Yc(sq:s)P0At the lab he received a “fine informal education in weekly  seminars,” learning from the likes of Noam Chomsky, William McGill,  George Miller, and Walter Rosenblith. From there he went on to Columbia  University as managing director of a behavioral models project, then to a  year at Stanford University’s Center for Advanced Study in the  Behavioral Sciences, followed by Harvard, then the University of  Pennsylvania, where he participated in the rebirth of its psychology  department. As he later wrote, “The 1950 bet had paid off.”

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o0vl)bQ |Xv0Although he has never taken a course in either psychology or  statistics, Luce is now recognized as a leading theoretician in  mathematical psychology. Dean Barbara Dosher of the University of  California, Irvine, School of Social Sciences called him “one of the  giants of the social and behavioral sciences … [whose] work has  fundamentally altered our understanding of how individuals and groups  make decisions.”

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R. Duncan Luce receiving the National Medal of Science

President Bush awards the 2003 National Medal of Science in the field of behavioral and social sciences to former APS  Board Member R. Duncan Luce, University of California at Irvine, during  a ceremony in the White House on March 14, 2005. The award is the  highest national honor for scientists.心理学空间.t ^iC6A

 

_xW-D}8z&F0Luce received national recognition for his achievements earlier this  year when he was awarded the National Medal of Science — widely  considered the highest national honor for scientists — for his work in  the field of behavioral and social sciences. President Bush presented  the medal at a White House ceremony on March 14, 2005.

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Luce recalled the scene: In the Blue Room, the president went down  the line of scientists, shaking hands with each, then said a few words  and left. “We were marched into the East Room and sat down, he came in  and read a little speech, then called our names and read the citation.”  As each scientist went up, he hung the medal around his or her neck and  said a few personal words. “In my case, he noticed I was wearing a  rather interesting Navajo [belt] buckle. Most of the others had the good  sense to have their suit coats buttoned. I had forgotten to do that.”  Then the president left and they were treated to a buffet lunch.

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Among Luce’s nine books, Individual Choice Behavior is widely recognized as groundbreaking, but perhaps the most challenging to write was Volume I of Foundations of Measurement.  That volume was written during a tumultuous sabbatical year in Rio de  Janeiro, Brazil, where he was teaching statistics at Pontifical Catholic  University.心理学空间tN!Y-Z3{8hYq

 

nUZ.D'yHq%U0“There was a great deal of unrest on the campus, stemming from the  military takeover that year [1967]. More than once I was phoned in the  morning and told to stay home until further notice” Luce recalled. Once  he found school walls riddled by machine-gun fire. “I also encountered  military road blocks when commuting. This was especially scary because  of my pathetic lack of linguistic skills. I learned embarrassingly  little Portuguese.”

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J+_'G ]/P0Brazil was followed by Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Study; then  the University of California, Irvine; then a return to Harvard, and  ultimately back to UCI in 1988 as Distinguished Professor of Cognitive  Science and director of the Institute for Mathematical Behavioral  Sciences. He retired from teaching in 1996 and as institute director in  1998.心理学空间)i5eyj1o0iN

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Since “retiring” Luce has been applying the basic ideas he developed to individual decision-making.心理学空间] kZ,r]u4u6`

 

%Guw(` _*b E JI0His current interest, he says, is gambling — building and testing in  computer-based lab experiments models to predict how people approach  decisions that involve risk. “I’ve been able to get pretty interesting  results that go beyond what other people have gotten,” he said.心理学空间0x i]nY7hc }

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“I’m fully prepared to accept that I may be wrong. We do experiments  on these assumptions, but in social sciences we don’t have anywhere like  the precision that you can get in physics. There’s always indecision.  You can try to reduce the uncertainty, but a lot of it seems  irreducible. Maybe some clever person will come along and improve [on  his models], but we’re certainly a lot better today than a century ago.”心理学空间+f)L;U V&L:MQ*?

 

K5q^"SE%pok U7D,vU0The potential relevance of his current research seems limitless.   “Almost everything we do in life is a gamble,” Luce said, citing not  only games of chance, but driving, flying, investing, anything that  involves uncertainty.  Like his career decision more than 50 years ago.心理学空间(h-[ V$E` U&_

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Now 80 and still pushing the envelope, he has a simple prescription  for a long healthy life: “A balanced diet, a lively intellectual life,  and by all means avoid strenuous exercise.  And I almost forgot —  inherit good genes.”心理学空间 ?&X o,B y

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