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Thomas L. Saaty (July 18, 1926 – August 14, 2017) was a Distinguished University Professor at the
University of Pittsburgh The University of Pittsburgh (Pitt) is a Commonwealth System of Higher Education, state-related research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. The university is composed of seventeen undergraduate and graduate schools and colle ...
, where he taught in the Joseph M. Katz Graduate School of Business. He is the inventor, architect, and primary theoretician of the
Analytic Hierarchy Process In the theory of decision making, the analytic hierarchy process (AHP), also analytical hierarchy process, is a structured technique for organizing and analyzing MCDA, complex decisions, based on mathematics and psychology. It was developed by ...
(AHP), a decision-making framework used for large-scale, multiparty,
multi-criteria decision analysis Multiple-criteria decision-making (MCDM) or multiple-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) is a sub-discipline of operations research that explicitly evaluates multiple conflicting criteria in decision making (both in daily life and in settings ...
, and of the
Analytic Network Process The analytic network process (ANP) is a more general form of the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) used in multi-criteria decision analysis. AHP structures a decision problem into a hierarchy with a goal, decision criteria, and alternatives, while ...
(ANP), its generalization to decisions with dependence and feedback. Later on, he generalized the mathematics of the ANP to the Neural Network Process (NNP) with application to neural firing and synthesis but none of them gain such popularity as AHP. He died on the 14th of August 2017 after a year-long battle with cancer. Prior to coming to the University of Pittsburgh, Saaty was professor of statistics and operations research at the
Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania The Wharton School ( ) is the business school of the University of Pennsylvania, a private Ivy League research university in Philadelphia. Established in 1881 through a donation from Joseph Wharton, a co-founder of Bethlehem Steel, the Wharton ...
(1969–79). Before that, he spent fifteen years working for U.S. government agencies and for companies doing government-sponsored research. His employers at that time included the Operations Evaluation Group of
MIT The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of modern technology and sc ...
at
the Pentagon The Pentagon is the headquarters building of the United States Department of Defense, in Arlington County, Virginia, across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C. The building was constructed on an accelerated schedule during World War II. As ...
, the
Office of Naval Research The Office of Naval Research (ONR) is an organization within the United States Department of the Navy responsible for the science and technology programs of the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps. Established by Congress in 1946, its mission is to plan ...
, and the
Arms Control and Disarmament Agency The U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (ACDA) was an independent agency of the United States government that existed from 1961 to 1999. Its mission was to strengthen United States national security by "formulating, advocating, negotiating, ...
at the
U.S. State Department The United States Department of State (DOS), or simply the State Department, is an executive department of the U.S. federal government responsible for the country's foreign policy and relations. Equivalent to the ministry of foreign affairs ...
.


Contributions

Saaty was a Distinguished University Professor at the University of Pittsburgh. He has made contributions in the fields of
operations research Operations research () (U.S. Air Force Specialty Code: Operations Analysis), often shortened to the initialism OR, is a branch of applied mathematics that deals with the development and application of analytical methods to improve management and ...
(parametric
linear programming Linear programming (LP), also called linear optimization, is a method to achieve the best outcome (such as maximum profit or lowest cost) in a mathematical model whose requirements and objective are represented by linear function#As a polynomia ...
,
epidemics An epidemic (from Ancient Greek, Greek ἐπί ''epi'' "upon or above" and δῆμος ''demos'' "people") is the rapid spread of disease to a large number of Host (biology), hosts in a given population within a short period of time. For example ...
and the spread of
biological agents Biological agents, also known as biological weapons or bioweapons, are pathogens used as weapons. In addition to these living or replicating pathogens, toxins and biotoxins are also included among the bio-agents. More than 1,200 different kin ...
,
queuing theory Queueing theory is the mathematical study of waiting lines, or queues. A queueing model is constructed so that queue lengths and waiting time can be predicted. Queueing theory is generally considered a branch of operations research because th ...
, and behavioral mathematics as it relates to operations),
arms control Arms control is a term for international restrictions upon the development, production, stockpiling, proliferation and usage of small arms, conventional weapons, and weapons of mass destruction. Historically, arms control may apply to melee wea ...
and
disarmament Disarmament is the act of reducing, limiting, or abolishing Weapon, weapons. Disarmament generally refers to a country's military or specific type of weaponry. Disarmament is often taken to mean total elimination of weapons of mass destruction, ...
, and
urban design Urban design is an approach to the design of buildings and the spaces between them that focuses on specific design processes and outcomes based on geographical location. In addition to designing and shaping the physical features of towns, city, ...
. He has written more than 35 books and 350 papers on mathematics,
operations research Operations research () (U.S. Air Force Specialty Code: Operations Analysis), often shortened to the initialism OR, is a branch of applied mathematics that deals with the development and application of analytical methods to improve management and ...
, and
decision making In psychology, decision-making (also spelled decision making and decisionmaking) is regarded as the cognitive process resulting in the selection of a belief or a course of action among several possible alternative options. It could be either ra ...
. Their subjects include
graph theory In mathematics and computer science, graph theory is the study of ''graph (discrete mathematics), graphs'', which are mathematical structures used to model pairwise relations between objects. A graph in this context is made up of ''Vertex (graph ...
and its applications, nonlinear mathematics, analytical
planning Planning is the process of thinking regarding the activities required to achieve a desired goal. Planning is based on foresight, the fundamental capacity for mental time travel. Some researchers regard the evolution of forethought - the cap ...
, and
game theory Game theory is the study of mathematical models of strategic interactions. It has applications in many fields of social science, and is used extensively in economics, logic, systems science and computer science. Initially, game theory addressed ...
and
conflict resolution Conflict resolution is conceptualized as the methods and processes involved in facilitating the peaceful ending of Conflict (process), conflict and Revenge, retribution. Committed group members attempt to resolve group conflicts by actively co ...
. According to the
Mathematics Genealogy Project The Mathematics Genealogy Project (MGP) is a web-based database for the academic genealogy of mathematicians.. it contained information on 300,152 mathematical scientists who contributed to research-level mathematics. For a typical mathematicia ...
, he has had 14 doctoral students. Saaty himself was a student of Einar Hille at
Yale Yale University is a private Ivy League research university in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701, Yale is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States, and one of the nine colonial colleges ch ...
. In line with his long-time interest in peace and
conflict resolution Conflict resolution is conceptualized as the methods and processes involved in facilitating the peaceful ending of Conflict (process), conflict and Revenge, retribution. Committed group members attempt to resolve group conflicts by actively co ...
, in 1983 Saaty proposed that an International Center for Conflict Resolution needs to be established that would have branches in many countries and would be staffed by retired diplomats, negotiators and conflict analysts. This idea was first published in an article "Center for Conflict Resolution," in the March 1984 issue of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, and it later appeared as an appendix in his 1989 book on Conflict Resolution co-authored with J.M. Alexander. A current revised version of this proposal is poste
here
with his University of Pittsburgh vita. A 2002 article listing the most important contributions to operations research from 1954 to date listed four from Saaty: "Parametric Programming" (1954, with S. I. Gass), "Mathematical Methods of Operations Research" (1959), "Elements of Queueing Theory" (1961), and "The
Analytic Hierarchy Process In the theory of decision making, the analytic hierarchy process (AHP), also analytical hierarchy process, is a structured technique for organizing and analyzing MCDA, complex decisions, based on mathematics and psychology. It was developed by ...
" (1980). The book on operations research was the first to summarize the formal mathematical methods in the field of Operations Research and was translated to Russian and Japanese. The comprehensive work on queueing theory was reviewed by D.G. Kendall of Oxford University in Mathematical Reviews who wrote that this book is "a substantial encyclopedia of queueing theory whose scope is indicated by the 910 items in the bibliography at the end of the book." The book "Mathematical Methods of Arms Control and Disarmament" was reviewed in Management Science in April 1969, "This fascinating book is an important contribution to the present task of discovering some valid underlying mathematical structures in politics...highly recommended both because of its numerous fascinating models and because of the deadly importance of its subject." The Analytic Hierarchy Process itself anticipates the
PageRank PageRank (PR) is an algorithm used by Google Search to rank web pages in their search engine results. It is named after both the term "web page" and co-founder Larry Page. PageRank is a way of measuring the importance of website pages. Accordin ...
algorithm by more than 20 years, with the same basic idea of using the eigenvector corresponding to the largest eigenvalue of a suitable matrix. Saaty has been elected to the
National Academy of Engineering The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) is an American Nonprofit organization, nonprofit, NGO, non-governmental organization. It is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM), along with the National Academ ...
(2005), and the ''Real Academia de Ciencias Exactas, Físicas y Naturales'' (Spanish Royal Academy of Sciences, 1971). In 1973, he received the
Lester R. Ford Award ''The American Mathematical Monthly'' is a peer-reviewed scientific journal of mathematics. It was established by Benjamin Finkel in 1894 and is published by Taylor & Francis on behalf of the Mathematical Association of America. It is an expositor ...
from the
Mathematical Association of America The Mathematical Association of America (MAA) is a professional society that focuses on mathematics accessible at the undergraduate level. Members include university A university () is an educational institution, institution of tertiary edu ...
for expository excellence in hi
paper
"Thirteen Colorful Variations on Guthrie's Four-color Conjecture" on the four color problem, and in 2000 he was awarded the gold medal of the International Society on Multi-criteria Decision Making. He is the 2007 recipient of th
Akao Prize
of the QFD Institute. In 2008, he received the
INFORMS The Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS) is an international society for practitioners in the fields of operations research Operations research () (U.S. Air Force Specialty Code: Operations Analysis), often s ...
Impact Prize for his development of the Analytic Hierarchy Process. The Impact Prize is awarded every two years to recognize contributions that have had a broad impact on the fields of operations research and the management sciences. Emphasis is placed on the breadth of the impact of an idea or body of research. In 2011 he was awarded, in a , the Doktor Honoris Causa degree by
Jagiellonian University The Jagiellonian University (, UJ) is a public research university in Kraków, Poland. Founded in 1364 by Casimir III the Great, King Casimir III the Great, it is the oldest university in Poland and one of the List of oldest universities in con ...
in
Kraków , officially the Royal Capital City of Kraków, is the List of cities and towns in Poland, second-largest and one of the oldest cities in Poland. Situated on the Vistula River in Lesser Poland Voivodeship, the city has a population of 804,237 ...
, Poland. In December 2011 he received the Herbert Simon Award for Outstanding Contribution in Information Technology and Decision Making for the paper "The Possibility Of Group Welfare Functions" coauthored with Professor Luis G. Vargas, published in the International Journal of Information Technology & Decision Making (IJITDM), Most of the university scholars are working on the basis he provided, Anum Bakhtyar. Saaty died at the age of 91 on August 14, 2017, 14 months after a cancer diagnosis.


Education

PhD, Mathematics,
Yale University Yale University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701, Yale is the List of Colonial Colleges, third-oldest institution of higher education in the United Stat ...
, 1953 (thesis, under Einar Carl Hille: "On the Bessel Tricomi Equation"). Post-graduate study,
University of Paris The University of Paris (), known Metonymy, metonymically as the Sorbonne (), was the leading university in Paris, France, from 1150 to 1970, except for 1793–1806 during the French Revolution. Emerging around 1150 as a corporation associated wit ...
, 1952–53. MA, Mathematics, Yale University, 1951. MS,
Physics Physics is the scientific study of matter, its Elementary particle, fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge whi ...
,
The Catholic University of America The Catholic University of America (CUA) is a private Catholic research university in Washington, D.C., United States. It is one of two pontifical universities of the Catholic Church in the United States – the only one that is not primarily ...
, 1949. BA, Columbia Union College, 1948.Faculty appointments
from Wharton (Nov 14, 1969)


Bibliography


Analytic hierarchy process (AHP)

*1980 ''The Analytic Hierarchy Process: Planning, Priority Setting, Resource Allocation'', , McGraw-Hill *1982 ''Decision Making for Leaders: The Analytical Hierarchy Process for Decisions in a Complex World'', , Wadsworth. 1988, Paperback, , RWS *1982 ''The Logic of Priorities: Applications in Business, Energy, Health, and Transportation'', with Luis G. Vargas, (Hardcover) (Paperback), Kluwer-Nijhoff *1985 ''Analytical Planning: The Organization of Systems'', with Kevin P. Kearns, , Pergamon *1989 ''Conflict Resolution: The Analytic Hierarchy Process'', with Joyce Alexander, , Praeger *1991 ''Prediction, Projection and Forecasting: Applications of the Analytic Hierarchy Process in Economics, Finance, Politics, Games and Sports'', with Luis G. Vargas, , Kluwer Academic *1992 ''The Hierarchon: A Dictionary of Hierarchies'', with Ernest H. Forman, , RWS *1994 ''Fundamentals of Decision Making and Priority Theory with the Analytic Hierarchy Process'', , RWS *1994 ''Decision Making in Economic, Social and Technological Environments'', with Luis G. Vargas, , RWS *1996 ''Vol. III and IV of the Analytic Hierarchy Process Series'', RWS *2001 ''Models, Methods, Concepts & Applications of the Analytic Hierarchy Process'', with Luis G. Vargas, , Kluwer Academic *2007 ''Group Decision Making: Drawing Out and Reconciling Differences'', with Kirti Peniwati, , RWS *2008 ''Decision making with the analytic hierarchy process'', Int. J. Services Sciences, Vol. 1, No. 1, 2008 (http://www.colorado.edu/geography/leyk/geog_5113/readings/saaty_2008.pdf ) - includes a statement of priority scales which measure intangibles in relative terms.


Analytic network process (ANP)

*1996 ''Decision Making with Dependence and Feedback: The Analytic Network Process'', , RWS *2005 ''Theory and Applications of the Analytic Network Process: Decision Making with Benefits, Opportunities, Costs and Risks'', , RWS *2005 ''The Encyclicon, A Dictionary of Decisions with Dependence and Feedback based on the Analytic Network Process'', with Müjgan S. Özdemir, , RWS *2006 ''Decision Making with the Analytic Network Process: Economic, Political, Social and Technological Applications with Benefits, Opportunities, Costs and Risks'', with Luis G. Vargas, , Springer *2008 ''The Encyclicon, Volume 2: A Dictionary of Complex Decisions using the Analytic Network Process'', with Brady Cillo, , RWS *2008
The analytic hierarchy and analytic network measurement processes: Applications to decisions under Risk
', European Journal of Pure and Applied Mathematics, 1 (1), 122–196, (2008)


Neural network process (NNP)

*1999 ''The Brain: Unraveling the Mystery of How it Works, The Neural Network Process'', , RWS *2009 ''Principia Mathematica Decernendi: Mathematical Principles of Decision Making - Generalization of the Analytic Network Process to Neural Firing and Synthesis'', , RWS


Operations research

*1959 ''Mathematical Methods of Operations Research'', no ISBN (translated into Japanese and Russian), McGraw-Hill. 1988 Extended edition, , Dover (paperback) *1961 ''Elements of Queueing Theory with Applications'', no ISBN (translated into Russian, Spanish and German), McGraw-Hill


Mathematics

*1964 ''Nonlinear Mathematics'', with J. Bram, no ISBN, McGraw-Hill. 1981 Reprinted as , Dover (paperback) *1964–1965 ''Lectures on Modern Mathematics'', Volumes I, II, III (Thomas L. Saaty, Editor), no ISBN (translated into Japanese), John Wiley *1965 ''Finite Graphs and Networks'', with R. Busacker, no ISBN (translated into Japanese, Russian, German and Hungarian), McGraw-Hill *1967 ''Modern Nonlinear Equations'', no ISBN, McGraw-Hill. 1981, reprinted as , Dover (paperback) *1969 ''The Spirit and Uses of the Mathematical Sciences'', (Thomas L. Saaty, Editor, with F.J. Weyl), no ISBN, McGraw-Hill *1970 ''Optimization in Integers and Related Extremal Problems'', no ISBN (translated into Russian), McGraw-Hill *1977 ''The Four-Color Problem; Assaults and Conquest'', , with Paul C. Kainen, McGraw-Hill. 1986 Revised edition, , Dover (paperback)


Applied mathematics

*1968 ''Mathematical Models of Arms Control and Disarmament'', , John Wiley *1973 ''Topics in Behavioral Mathematics'', no ISBN, Mathematical Association of America *1981 ''Thinking with Models: Mathematical Models in the Physical, Biological, and Social Sciences'', with Joyce Alexander, hardback , paperback , Pergamon


Other topics

*1973 ''Compact City'', with George B. Dantzig, hardback , paperback (translated into Japanese and Russian), W.H. Freeman *1990 ''Embracing the Future'', with Larry W. Boone, , Praeger *2001 ''Creative Thinking, Problem Solving & Decision Making'', , RWS *2013 ''Compact City: The Next Urban Evolution in Response to Climate Change'', , RWS


References


External links


University of Pittsburgh faculty biography of Thomas L. Saaty''Real Academia de Ciencias, Relación de Académicos''

Biography of Thomas L. Saaty
from the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences {{DEFAULTSORT:Saaty, Thomas 1926 births 2017 deaths 20th-century American mathematicians 21st-century American mathematicians Iraqi mathematicians Queueing theorists Catholic University of America alumni Yale University alumni University of Pittsburgh faculty University of Pennsylvania faculty People from Mosul American people of Iraqi descent American operations researchers Members of the United States National Academy of Engineering