David Gale
American mathematician (1921–2008)
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Through Paris, Mathematical logic and Linear programming
Personal life
Gale graduated with a Bachelor of Arts from Swarthmore College, obtained a M.A. from the University of Michigan in 1947, and earned his Ph.D. in mathematics at Princeton University in 1949. He taught at Brown University from 1950 to 1965 and then joined the faculty at the University of California, Berkeley.
Gale lived in Berkeley, California, and Paris, France, with his partner Sandra Gilbert, feminist literary scholar and poet. He has three daughters and two grandsons. He died on March 7, 2008 of a heart attack at the age of 86.
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Contributions
Gale's contributions to mathematical economics include an early proof of the existence of competitive equilibrium, his solution of the n-dimensional Ramsey problem, in the theory of optimal economic growth.
Gale and F. M. Stewart initiated the study of infinite games with perfect information. This work led to fundamental contributions to mathematical logic.
Gale is the inventor of the game of Bridg-It (also known as "Game of Gale") and Chomp.
Gale played a fundamental role in the development of the theory of linear programming and linear inequalities. His classic 1960 book The Theory of Linear Economic Models continues to be a standard reference for this area.
The Gale transform is an involution on sets of points in projective space. The concept is important in optimization, coding theory, and algebraic geometry.
Gale's 1962 paper with Lloyd Shapley on the stable marriage problem provides the first formal statement and proof of a problem that has far-reaching implications in many matching markets. The resulting Gale–Shapley algorithm is currently being applied in New York and Boston public school systems in assigning students to schools. In 2012 The Nobel Prize in Economics was awarded to Shapley for this work.
Gale wrote a Mathematical Entertainments column for The Mathematical Intelligencer from 1991 through 1997. The book Tracking the Automatic Ant collects these columns.
In 2004 Gale developed MathSite, a pedagogic website that uses interactive exhibits to illustrate important mathematical ideas. MathSite won the 2007 Pirelli Internetional Award for Science Communication in Mathematics.