Anatol Rapoport (Ukrainian: Анатолій
Борисович Рапопо́рт; Russian:
Анато́лий Бори́сович Рапопо́рт;
May 22, 1911 – January 20, 2007) was a Ukrainian-born
American mathematical psychologist. He contributed
to general systems theory, to mathematical
biology and to the mathematical modeling of
social interaction and stochastic models of
contagion.
== Biography ==
Rapoport was born in Lozova, Kharkov Governorate,
Russia (in today's Kharkiv Oblast, Ukraine)
into a secular Jewish family. In 1922, he
came to the United States, and in 1928 he
became a naturalized citizen. He started studying
music in Chicago and continued with piano,
conducting and composition at the Vienna Hochschule
für Musik where he studied from 1929 to 1934.
However, due to the rise of Nazism, he found
it impossible to make a career as a pianist.He
shifted his career into mathematics, getting
a Ph.D. degree in mathematics under Otto Schilling
and Abraham Adrian Albert at the University
of Chicago in 1941 on the thesis Construction
of Non-Abelian Fields with Prescribed Arithmetic.
According to The Globe and Mail, he was a
member of the American Communist Party for
three years, but quit before enlisting in
the U.S. Army Air Corps in 1941, serving in
Alaska and India during World War II.After
the war, he joined the Committee on Mathematical
Biology at the University of Chicago (1947–54),
publishing his first book, Science and the
Goals of Man, co-authored with semanticist
S. I. Hayakawa in 1950. He also received a
one-year fellowship at the prestigious Center
for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences
in Stanford, California.
From 1955 to 1970, Rapoport was Professor
of Mathematical Biology and Senior Research
Mathematician at the University of Michigan,
as well as founding member, in 1955, of the
Mental Health Research Institute (MHRI) at
the University of Michigan. In 1970 Rapoport
moved to Toronto to avoid the war-making ways
of the Vietnam-era United States. He was appointed
professor of mathematics and psychology at
the University of Toronto (1970–79). The
university appointed him professor emeritus
in 1980. He lived in bucolic Wychwood Park
overlooking downtown Toronto, a neighbour
of Marshall McLuhan. On his retirement from
the University of Toronto, he became director
of the Institute of Advanced Studies (Vienna)
until 1983.
University of Toronto appointed him professor
of peace studies in 1984, a position he held
until 1996, but continued to teach until 2000.In
1984 he co-founded Science for Peace, was
elected president and remained on its executive
until 1998.In 1954 Anatol Rapoport co-founded
the Society for General Systems Research,
along with the researchers Ludwig von Bertalanffy,
Ralph Gerard, and Kenneth Boulding. He became
president of the Society for General Systems
Research in 1965.
Anatol Rapoport died of pneumonia in Toronto.
He is survived by his wife Gwen, daughter
Anya, and sons Alexander and Anthony.
== Work ==
Rapoport contributed to general systems theory,
to mathematical biology, and to the mathematical
modeling of social interaction and stochastic
models of contagion. He combined his mathematical
expertise with psychological insights into
the study of game theory, social networks,
and semantics.
Rapoport extended these understandings into
studies of psychological conflict, dealing
with nuclear disarmament and international
politics. His autobiography, Certainties and
Doubts: A Philosophy of Life, was published
in 2001.
=== Game theory ===
Rapoport had a versatile mind, working in
mathematics, psychology, biology, game theory,
social network analysis, and peace and conflict
studies. For example, he pioneered in the
modeling of parasitism and symbiosis, researching
cybernetic theory. This went on to give a
conceptual basis for his lifelong work in
conflict and cooperation.
Among many other well-known books on fights,
games, violence, and peace, Rapoport was the
author of over 300 articles and of "Two-Person
Game Theory" (1966) and "N-Person Game Theory"
(1970). He analyzed contests in which there
are more than two sets of conflicting interests,
such as war, diplomacy, poker, or bargaining.
His work led him to peace research, including
books on The Origins of Violence (1989) and
Peace, An Idea Whose Time Has Come (1993).
In the 1980s, he won a computer tournament
which was based on Robert Axelrod's The Evolution
of Cooperation and was designed to further
understanding of the ways in which cooperation
could emerge through evolution. The contenders
had to present programs that could play iterated
games of the prisoner's dilemma and these
were pitted against each other. Rapoport's
entry, Tit-For-Tat has only four lines of
code. The program opens by cooperating with
its opponent. It then plays exactly as the
other side played in the previous game. If
the other side defected in the previous game,
the program also defects; but only for one
game. If the other side cooperates, the program
continues to cooperate. According to Peace
Magazine author/editor Metta Spencer, the
program "punished the other player for selfish
behaviour and rewarded her for cooperative
behaviour—but the punishment lasted only
as long as the selfish behaviour lasted. This
proved to be an exceptionally effective sanction,
quickly showing the other side the advantages
of cooperating. It also set moral philosophers
to proposing this as a workable principle
to use in real life interactions".
His children report that he was a strong chess
player but a bad poker player because he non-verbally
revealed the strength of his hands.
=== Social network analysis ===
Rapoport was an early developer of social
network analysis. His original work showed
that one can measure large networks by profiling
traces of flows through them. This enables
learning about the speed of the distribution
of resources, including information, and what
speeds or impedes these flows—such as race,
gender, socioeconomic status, proximity, and
kinship. This work linked social networks
to the diffusion of innovation, and by extension,
to epidemiology. Rapoport's empirical work
traced the spread of information within a
school. It prefigured the study of degrees
of separation by showing the rapid spread
of information in a population to almost all—but
not all—school members (see references below).
His work on random nets predates the random
graphs as defined by the Erdős–Rényi model
and independently by Edgar Gilbert.
=== Conflict and peace studies ===
According to Thomas Homer-Dixon in the Toronto
Globe and Mail, Rapoport "became anti-militarist
quite soon after World War II. The idea of
military values became anathema". He was a
leading organizer of the first teach-ins against
the Vietnam War at the University of Michigan,
a model that spread rapidly throughout North
America. He told at a teach-in: "By undertaking
the war against Vietnam, the United States
has undertaken a war against humanity...This
war we shall not win". (Ann Arbor News, April
1967). He said he was an abolitionist, rather
than a total pacifist: "I'm for killing the
institution of war". In 1968, he signed the
"Writers and Editors War Tax Protest" pledge,
vowing to refuse tax payments in protest against
the Vietnam War.Rapoport returned to the University
of Toronto to become the founding (and unpaid)
Professor of Peace and Conflict Studies programme,
working with George Ignatieff and Canada's
Science for Peace organization. As its sole
professor at the start, he used a rigorous,
interdisciplinary approach to the study of
peace, integrating mathematics, politics,
psychology, philosophy, science, and sociology.
His main concern was to legitimize peace studies
as a worthy academic pursuit. The Trudeau
Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies continued
to flourish at the University of Toronto under
the leadership of Thomas Homer-Dixon, and,
from 2008, under Ron Levi. When Rapoport began,
there was one (unpaid) professor and twelve
students. Now, there are three (paid) professors
and ninety students.Rapoport's students report
that he was an engaged and inspiring professor
who captured their attention, imagination
and interest with his wide-ranging knowledge,
passion for the subject, good humor, kind
and generous spirit, attentiveness to student
concerns, and animated teaching style.In 1981
Rapoport co-founded the international non-governmental
organization Science for Peace. He was recognized
in the 1980s for his contribution to world
peace through nuclear conflict restraint via
his game theoretic models of psychological
conflict resolution. He won the Lenz International
Peace Research Prize in 1976. Professor Rapoport
was also a member of the editorial board of
the International Scholarly Journal of Environmental
Peace published by the International Innovation
Projects at the University of Toronto edited
by Biswajit (Bob) Ganguly and Roger I. C.
Hansell.
== Publications ==
=== Books ===
1950, Science and the Goals of Man, Harper
& Bros., New York
1953, Operational Philosophy: Integrating
Knowledge and Action, Harper & Bros., New
York
1960, Fights, Games, and Debates, University
of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor
1965, Prisoner's Dilemma, The University of
Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI. (co-author; Albert
M. Chammah)
1966, Two-Person Game Theory: The Essential
Ideas, Ann Arbor, MI, The University of Michigan
Press. (reprinted by Dover Press, Mineola,
NY, 1999).
1969, Strategy and Conscience, Shocken Books,
New York, NY. (first published in 1964)
1970, N-Person Game Theory. Concepts and Applications,
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI. (reprinted
by Dover Press, Mineola, NY, 2001).
1974, Conflict in Man-made Environment, Harmondsworth,
Penguin Books.
1975, Semantics, Crowell.
1986, General System Theory. Essential Concepts
and Applications, Abacus, Tunbridge Wells.
1989, The Origins of Violence: Approaches
to the Study of Conflict, Paragon House, New
York.
1992, Peace: An Idea, Whose Time Has Come,
University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, MI.
1998, Decision Theory and Decision Behaviour,
Macmillan, Houndmills.
2000, Certainties and Doubts: A Philosophy
of Life, Black Rose Books, Montreal, 2000.
His autobiography.
2001, Skating on Thin Ice, RDR Books, Oakland,
CA.
Рапопорт, А. Б. (2003). Три разговора
с русскими. Об истине, любви,
борьбе и мире. Прогресс-Традиция.
ISBN 5-89826-156-7. (English version: Rapoport,
Anatol (2005). Conversations with Three Russians:
Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Lenin: A Systemic View
on Two Centuries of Societal Evolution. Verlag
Dr. Kovač. ISBN 978-3830019558.).
=== Selected articles ===
1948, "Cycle distributions in random nets."
Bull. Math. Biophysics 10(3):145–157.
1951, with Ray Solomonoff, "Connectivity of
random nets." Bull. Math. Biophysics 13:107–117.
1953, "Spread of information through a population
with sociostructural bias: I. Assumption of
transitivity." Bulletin of Mathematical Biophysics,
15, 523-533.
1956, with Ralph W. Gerard and Clyde Kluckhohn,
"Biological and cultural evolution: Some analogies
and explorations". Behavioral Science 1: 6-34.
1957, "Contribution to the Theory of Random
and Biased Nets." Bulletin of Mathematical
Biology 19:257-77.
1960 with W.J. Horvath, "The theoretical channel
capacity of a single neuron as determined
by various coding systems". Information and
Control, 3(4):335-350.
1962, "The Use and Misuse of Game Theory".
Scientific American, 207: 108-114.
1963, "Mathematical models of social interaction".
R. D. Luce, R. R. Bush, & E. Galanter (Eds.),
Handbook of Mathematical Psychology, Vol.
II, pp. 493–579. New York, NY: John Wiley
and Sons.
1974, with Lawrence B. Slobodkin, "An optimal
strategy of evolution". Q. Rev. Biol. 49:181-200
1979, "Some Problems Relating to Randomly
Constructed Biased Networks." Perspectives
on Social Network Research:119-164.
1989, with Y. Yuan, "Some Aspects of Epidemics
and Social Nets." Pp. 327–348 in The Small
World, ed. by Manfred Kochen. Norwood, NJ:
Ablex.
=== About Rapoport ===
Ron Csillag,"Anatol Rapoport, Academic 1911-2007."
Toronto Globe and Mail, January 31, 2007,
p. S7
Chesmak Farhoumand-Sims, "Memories of Anatol
Rapoport." Peace Magazine, April 2007, p.
14
Alisa Ferguson, "Rapoport was Renowned Mathematical
Psychologist, Peace Activist." University
of Toronto Bulletin, February 20, 2007.
Markus Schwaninger, "Obituary Anatol Rapoport
(May 22, 1911 - January 20, 2007): Pioneer
of Systems Theory and Peace Research, Mathematician,
Philosopher and Pianist." Systems Research
and Behavioral Science, Vol. 24, 2007, pp.
655–658
