David Gale, Known for Mathematical Economics, Has Died

March 18, 2008

Renowned mathematician David Gale, born in 1921, died on March 7. A Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley, Gale made significant contributions in the fields of mathematical economics, game theory, and convex analysis.

After earning his PhD in mathematics from Princeton University in 1949, Gale taught at Brown University from 1950-65 and then joined the faculty of the University of California, Berkeley. Gale's early contributions to mathematical economics included a solution of the n-dimensional "Ramsey Problem."

Gale helped initiate the study of infinite games with perfect information, which led to fundamental contributions to mathematical logic. He played a central role in the development of the theory of linear programming and linear inequalities. His 1960 book The Theory of Linear Economic Models remains a standard reference in this area.

The eponymous Gale Transform, which is an involution on sets of points in projective space, is important in optimization, coding theory, and algebraic geometry. Gale’s co-authored paper on the stability of marriage provided the first formal statement and proof of a problem having implications in matching markets and is used by New York and Boston public school systems to assign students to schools. (The 1962 article "College Admissions and the Stability of Marriage," by Gale and Lloyd Shapley, ranks as the most frequently accessed American Mathematical Monthly article in the JSTOR database.)

Gale received numerous honors: the MAA's Lester R. Ford Award in 1979; membership in the National Academy of Science in 1983; and the Pirelli International Award for Science Communication in Mathematics in 2007, just to name a few.

For more about David Gale, see Walter Meyer's interview "David Gale: Restless Pioneer" (CMJ, January 2006).