Maurice Allais

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Maurice Allais

Maurice Félix Charles Allais [ mɔˈʀiːs aˈlɛ ] (born May 31, 1911 in Paris , † October 9, 2010 in Saint-Cloud ) was a French engineer and economist . In 1988 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics “for his groundbreaking contributions to the theory of markets and the efficient use of resources”.

Life

He attended the well-known high school Lycée Lakanal in Sceaux near Paris. Allais studied at the École polytechnique and the École nationale supérieure des mines in Paris. There he was professor of economics and director of its center for economic analysis since 1944. In 1949 he received his doctorate in engineering from the Sorbonne .

He has also taught at the Paris X University in Nanterre and the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva.

Research in economics

He published mostly in French, so some of his discoveries in economics were later found and published independently by others, such as the Overlapping Generations Model and the Golden Rule of Accumulation , both in his 1947 book Économie et Intérêt , and early work to behavioral economics . In the 1940s he published on decision theory under uncertainties independently of simultaneous work by John von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern .

He is best known for the Allais Paradox (1953).

In 1992 he criticized the Maastricht Treaty in articles in L'Humanité for placing too much emphasis on free trade and he was also a critic of the introduction of the European single currency .

Pendulum tests and the Allais effect

Allais also dealt with physics in the 1950s, especially experiments on gravity with a pendulum he developed, a " paraconic " (ball-bearing) pendulum that can rotate around the vertical axis in addition to oscillation in two directions. He carried out long-term experiments on the possible existence of an ether (anisotropy of space) and found a periodicity of 24.8 hours (later explained as a possible influence of the moon). He also found an abnormal behavior of the pendulum during two solar eclipses in 1954 and 1959 ( Allais effect ). Experiments carried out later by other groups with other pendulums and gravimeters came to different results: some believed they had discovered small anomalies, others found nothing. T. Van Flandern and XS Yang explained these effects in 2003 by air currents in the atmosphere during solar eclipses.

Awards

At the age of 22, Maurice Allais received the first of numerous awards that were awarded to him.

Economics

Maurice Allais received most of the prizes and awards in the field of economics. Before he received the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1988 , he received the following prizes and honors, among others:

  • 1933: Prix Laplace and Prix Rivot of the French Academy of Sciences
  • 1954: Prix Charles Dupin of the Académie des sciences morales et politiques for his work "A la recherche d'une discipline économique" (1943)
  • 1958: Frederick W. Lanchester Prize , for the 1957 published work "Method of Appraising Economic Prospects of Mining Explorations over Large Territories - Algerian Sahara Case Study".
  • 1959: Prix Joseph Dutens, the Académie des sciences morales et politiques for his work "La Gestion des Houillères nationalisées et la théorie économique" (1953)
  • 1960: Grand Prize of the Atlantic Community of the Association française pour la Communauté Atlantique for his work "L'Europe unie, route de prospérité" (1959)
  • 1968: André Arnoux Grand Prize of the Association pour la liberté Économique et le Progrès Social for his complete works
  • 1970: Gold medal of the Société d'Encouragement pour l'Industrie Nationale for his complete works
  • 1978: Gold medal from the Center National de la Recherche Scientifique for his complete works
  • 1983: Prix Robert Blanché of the Académie des sciences morales et politiques for his work "Fréquence, Probabilité et Hasard" (1982)
  • 1984: Prix Zerilli Marimo of the Académie des sciences morales et politiques for his complete works
  • 1987: Prix Spécial by the Dupuit-de-Lesseps jury for his complete works
  • 1988: Nobel Prize in Economics
  • 1990: Member of the National Academy of Sciences

physics

Maurice Allais has also received several awards for his research in the natural sciences. This is how he received or was:

  • the Prix Galabert of the Société Française d'astronautique (1959) for his research on gravitation and the movement of the Foucault pendulum.
  • Winner of the Gravity Research Foundation (USA, 1959) for his paper "New Theoretical and Experimental Research Work on Gravitation" (1959)

Works (selection)

See also

Web links

Commons : Maurice Allais  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Page of the former students with a speech by Allais (French) ( Memento from July 30, 2012 in the web archive archive.today ), accessed on January 5, 2012
  2. Essays by Allais on his pendulum in English , u. a. Allais Should the Laws of Gravitation be Reconsidered? , Aero / Space Engineering, Volume 9, 1959, pp. 46-55
  3. Allais published several papers on this in the Compte Rendus Acad. Sci. Paris, 1957 to 1959
  4. ^ Van Flandern, Yang, Allais gravity and pendulum effects during solar eclipses explained, Phys. Rev. D., Volume 67, 2003, 022002
  5. ^ Frederick W. Lanchester Prize. informs.org ( Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences ), archived from the original on October 2, 2015 ; accessed on February 16, 2016 .