Melvin Dresher

Melvin Dresher (born Dreszer; March 13, 1911 – June 4, 1992) was a Polish-born American mathematician, notable for developing, alongside Merrill Flood, the game theoretical model of cooperation and conflict known as the Prisoner's dilemma while at RAND in 1950 (Albert W. Tucker gave the game its prison-sentence interpretation, and thus the name by which it is known today).^[1][2]

Melvin Dresher
Melvin Dresher, early 1940s
Born	(1911-03-13)March 13, 1911 Krasnystaw, Poland
Died	June 4, 1992(1992-06-04) (aged 81) Kern, California, US
Education	Lehigh University Yale University
Known for	Prisoner's dilemma
Scientific career
Fields	Mathematics
Institutions	Michigan State College War Production Board National Defense Research Committee Catholic University of America RAND
Doctoral advisor	Øystein Ore

Education and career

The Mathematics of Games of Strategy: Theory and Applications by Melvin Dresher

Dresher came to the United States in 1923. He obtained his B.S. from Lehigh University in 1933 and went on to complete his Ph.D. at Yale University in 1937 under the supervision of Øystein Ore. His dissertation was titled "Multi-Groups: A Generalisation of the Notion of Group." Dresher's career began as instructor of mathematics at Michigan State College from 1938 to 1941, he then served as statistician for the War Production Board from 1941 to 1944, and worked as a mathematical physicist for the National Defense Research Committee from 1944 to 1946 Dresher became a professor of mathematics at the Catholic University of America from 1946 to 1947, before joining RAND in 1948 as a research mathematician.

Dresher was the author of several RAND research papers on game theory, and his widely acclaimed book The Mathematics of Games of Strategy: Theory and Applications (originally published in 1961 as Games of Strategy: Theory and Applications) continues to be studied today. Dresher's research has been referenced and discussed in a variety of published books, including Prisoner's Dilemma by William Poundstone and A Beautiful Mind by Sylvia Nasar.^[3]

Family

Dresher married Martha Whitaker in 1937 and is survived by his daughter, Olivia Dresher (b. 1945),^[4] and son, Paul Dresher (b. 1951).

Bibliography

• Bohnenblust, H.; Dresher, Melvin; Girshick, M.; Harris, Theodore; Helmer-Hirschberg, Olaf; McKinsey, J.; Shapley, Lloyd; Snow, R. (1948). Mathematical Theory of Zero-Sum Two-Person Games with a Finite Number or a Continuum of Strategies. RAND Corporation. doi:10.7249/r115.
• Berge, Claude; Dresher, Melvin, eds. (1970). Contributions to the theory of games. 3: C. Berge ... Ed. by M. Dresher. Annals of mathematics studies (4. print ed.). Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Pr. ISBN 978-0-691-07936-3.
• Dresher, Melvin (1981). The mathematics of games of strategy: theory and applications (unabridged republ. of the [ed.] ... Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1961 ed.). New York: Dover. ISBN 978-0-486-64216-1.
• Dresher, M.; Aumann, R. J., eds. (1985). Advances in game theory. Annals of mathematics studies (Repr. from the hardcover ed.). Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press. ISBN 978-0-691-07902-8.
• Dresher, Melvin (2007). Games of strategy: theory and applications (New RAND ed.). Santa Monica, Calif: RAND Corp. ISBN 978-0-8330-4225-5.

References

• Obituary, July 2, 1992 issue of the Palisadian-Post newspaper (Pacific Palisades, California).
• "In Remembrance", July 9, 1992 issue of RAND Items (a biweekly publication for employees of RAND).

1. Taylor, Timothy (2020-01-17). "CONVERSABLE ECONOMIST: The Prisoner's Dilemma: Celebrating its 70th Anniversary". CONVERSABLE ECONOMIST. Retrieved 2023-12-23.
2. Kuhn, Steven (2019), Zalta, Edward N. (ed.), "Prisoner's Dilemma", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2019 ed.), Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University, retrieved 2023-12-23
3. Hounshell, David (1997). "The Cold War, RAND, and the Generation of Knowledge, 1946-1962". Historical Studies in the Physical and Biological Sciences. 27 (2): 237–267. doi:10.2307/27757779. ISSN 0890-9997.
4. Dresher, Olivia (2020-01-17). "OliviaDresher.com: BIO". OliviaDresher.com. Retrieved 2024-01-27.