Franz Alt (mathematician)
Encyclopedia
Franz Leopold Alt was an Austria
n-born American
mathematician
who made major contributions to computer science
in its early days. He was best known as one of the founders of the Association for Computing Machinery
, and served as its president from 1950 to 1952.
, Austria on November 30, 1910 to a secular Jewish family. He received a PhD in mathematics in 1932 from the University of Vienna
, where his principal teachers were Hans Hahn
and Karl Menger
. He was one of the regular participants in, and contributors to, Menger’s “Mathematisches Kolloquium.” [Afterword, Karl Menger, Ergebnisse eines Mathematischen Kolloquiums, Springer-Verlag/Wien, 1998] Alt engaged in research in set-theoretic topology
and logical foundations of geometry
.
In addition, in the next few years he became interested in econometrics
, stimulated by Oskar Morgenstern
, then professor of economics at the University of Vienna, later at Princeton University
. In 1936, Alt developed an axiomatic foundation for economic concepts, described in “Ueber die Messbarkeit des Nutzens,” which he presented at the International Congress of Mathematicians
in Oslo
.[Zeitschrift fuer Nationaloekonomie, VII/2, 1936; in German] This paper was also published as “On the Measurability of Utility” in Preferences, Utility, and Demand: A Minnesota Symposium (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1971).
in 1938 and came to New York
with his wife Alice Modern, whom he married just before leaving Vienna. In the next few years it was their highest priority to save relatives and friends endangered by the Nazi terror in Austria or Germany. This involved finding Americans willing to serve as sponsors for immigration visas, and they were successful in helping about 30 adults and children to escape.
Between 1938 and 1946 Alt worked for six years at the Econometric Institute in New York City, interrupted by two years of service in the United States Army
. At the Econometric Institute he served successively as Research Principal and Assistant Director of Research engaged in the analysis of economic time series by methods such as multiple correlation
, used for business forecasting. He was concerned with the use of mathematical and statistical methods for the study and forecasting of business conditions in the economy as a whole and in a number of industries, commodity and security markets. One of the clients advised by Alt was the General Motors Corporation
.
, he volunteered for military service but was at first rejected as an alien; he was drafted into the Army in 1943. (Citizenship was granted in 1944.) He then served in the elite 10th Mountain Division, trained for skiing, rock climbing and mountain fighting. Toward the end of the war he graduated from officers’ training as a Second Lieutenant.
While in military service he was assigned to the Army’s Aberdeen Proving Ground
in 1945, in charge of planning for electronic computation. On discharge from the Army, he returned to the Econometric Institute for one year. As a civilian he returned to Aberdeen in 1946-48, and was Deputy Chief of the Computing Laboratory, which was a general-purpose mathematical service organization operating large digital and analog computing machines, punched card
installation, and data reduction
facility.
Division (1952–67), he directed the early use of computers throughout the National Bureau of Standards and elsewhere in the federal government, as well as research in numerical analysis
, statistical engineering and some other branches of applied mathematics. From 1959 to 1961, he was one of the editors of the NBS Journal of Research
.
For several years he also served as administrator of the Bureau of Standards’ program to award research grants in physics and chemistry in India
, Pakistan
and Israel
, where foreign currency (PL 480) available for such purposes had been allocated to the Bureau.
Also during this time, he became interested in the use of computers for automatic translation of languages. This led to the founding of the Association for Computational Linguistics
and to the organization of two international meetings jointly with a similar group in Japan, one in Washington, D.C., the other in Tokyo.
, and formerly a member of the American Statistical Association
, Institute of Mathematical Statistics
, Econometric Society
, and Association for Computational Linguistics.
Alt has written and been interviewed about the history of ACM several times. He wrote “Fifteen Years ACM: The development years of ACM, as recounted in 1962 by founding member and former president Franz L. Alt, depicts the players and progress of an organization committed to sharing computing knowledge and skills” (Communications of the ACM, June 1962, Vol.5 #6; reprinted October 1987, Vol. 30 #10).
Alt was interviewed in 1969 by Uta C. Merzbach for the Computer Oral History Collection at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History(http://invention.smithsonian.org/downloads/fa_cohc_tr_alt690224.pdf). Oral History Transcript at Niels Bohr Archives, American Institute of Physics
, 24 Feb. And 13 March 1969.
For the 25th anniversary of the founding of ACM, Alt wrote “Archeology of Computers: Reminiscences, 1945-47" (Communications of the ACM, July 1972, Vol. 15 #7).
We had succeeded in obtaining John von Neumann
as keynote speaker [for the first national meeting of the ACM]. He discussed the need for, and likely impact of, electronic computing. He mentioned the “new programming method” for ENIAC
and explained that its seemingly small vocabulary was in fact ample; that future computers, then in the design stage, would get along on a dozen instruction types, and this was known to be adequate for expressing all of mathematics. . . Von Neumann went on to say that one need not be surprised at this small number, since about 1,000 words were known to be adequate for most situations of real life, and mathematics was only a small part of life, and a very simple part at that. This caused some hilarity in the audience, which provoked von Neumann to say: “If people do not believe that mathematics is simple, it is only because they do not realize how complicated life is."
Alt was interviewed in 1995 by Janet Benton (excerpted as “Franz Alt Remembers the Early Years of Computing and the Creation of ACM,” ACMMemberNet Supplement to Communications of the ACM, Feb. 1996, Vol. 39 #2).
For JACM’s 50th Anniversary, he contributed “Journal of the ACM–The Beginnings” (Journal of the ACM, Jan. 2003, Vol. 50 #1).
, he left the United States Government for the position of Deputy Director of the Information Division of the American Institute of Physics in New York. There he was instrumental in establishing a computerized information system on papers in the physics journal literature, including hierarchical classification, subject indexing and a citation index.
in November 2010.
In 1998, Alt attended the International Congress of Mathematicians in Berlin as the guest of the Deutsche Mathematiker-Vereinigung (German Mathematical Society
) in connection with its exhibition “Terror and Exile: Persecution and Expulsion of Mathematicians from Berlin between 1933-1945."
Die Oesterreichische Mathematische Gesellschaft (the Austrian Mathematical Society
) invited him to attend the 2001 joint meeting in Vienna of the German and Austrian mathematical societies in conjunction with the exhibition “Vienna 1938 and the Exodus of Mathematicians.” At the opening of the exhibition, he spoke of his recollections [“Personliche Erinnerungen an 1938," Internationale Mathematische Nachrichten, Nr. 188 (2001), 1-7 www.oemg.ac.at/IMN/imn188.pdf]
In May 2007, Chancellor Alfred Gusenbauer
conferred on Alt the “Ehrenkreuz fuer Wissenschaft und Kunst I. Klasse,” the highest distinction for science and art in Austria. In a symposium in the University Dr. Karl Sigmund
, professor of mathematics of the University of Vienna, spoke of Alt’s place in the history of mathematics in Vienna between the wars. Dr. Walter Schachermayer, then of the Vienna University of Technology
, spoke about Alt’s paper “On the Measurement of Utility,” presented at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Oslo in 1936, and its relation to the work of John von Neumann, Oscar Morgenstern and Kenneth Arrow
, and recent developments in the notion of coherent risk measure
s. [SAA [Standards Alumni Association] Newsletter, June 2007, p. 19].
While he was in Vienna in May 2007, Alt spoke to students of his old gymnasium, the Stubenbastei. The school established the Franz Alt Preis in his honor. The prize is awarded in two categories, Science and Mathematics and Human Rights and Justice, for papers written by graduating students, and has been awarded annually since 2008.
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...
n-born American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
mathematician
Mathematician
A mathematician is a person whose primary area of study is the field of mathematics. Mathematicians are concerned with quantity, structure, space, and change....
who made major contributions to computer science
Computer science
Computer science or computing science is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and of practical techniques for their implementation and application in computer systems...
in its early days. He was best known as one of the founders of the Association for Computing Machinery
Association for Computing Machinery
The Association for Computing Machinery is a learned society for computing. It was founded in 1947 as the world's first scientific and educational computing society. Its membership is more than 92,000 as of 2009...
, and served as its president from 1950 to 1952.
Vienna
Alt was born in ViennaVienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...
, Austria on November 30, 1910 to a secular Jewish family. He received a PhD in mathematics in 1932 from the University of Vienna
University of Vienna
The University of Vienna is a public university located in Vienna, Austria. It was founded by Duke Rudolph IV in 1365 and is the oldest university in the German-speaking world...
, where his principal teachers were Hans Hahn
Hans Hahn
Hans Hahn was an Austrian mathematician who made contributions to functional analysis, topology, set theory, the calculus of variations, real analysis, and order theory.-Biography:...
and Karl Menger
Karl Menger
Karl Menger was a mathematician. He was the son of the famous economist Carl Menger. He is credited with Menger's theorem. He worked on mathematics of algebras, algebra of geometries, curve and dimension theory, etc...
. He was one of the regular participants in, and contributors to, Menger’s “Mathematisches Kolloquium.” [Afterword, Karl Menger, Ergebnisse eines Mathematischen Kolloquiums, Springer-Verlag/Wien, 1998] Alt engaged in research in set-theoretic topology
Set-theoretic topology
In mathematics, set-theoretic topology is a subject that combines set theory and general topology. It focuses on topological questions that are independent of ZFC. A famous problem is the normal Moore space question, a question in general topology that was the subject of intense research. The...
and logical foundations of geometry
Geometry
Geometry arose as the field of knowledge dealing with spatial relationships. Geometry was one of the two fields of pre-modern mathematics, the other being the study of numbers ....
.
In addition, in the next few years he became interested in econometrics
Econometrics
Econometrics has been defined as "the application of mathematics and statistical methods to economic data" and described as the branch of economics "that aims to give empirical content to economic relations." More precisely, it is "the quantitative analysis of actual economic phenomena based on...
, stimulated by Oskar Morgenstern
Oskar Morgenstern
Oskar Morgenstern was a German-born Austrian-School economist. He, along with John von Neumann, helped found the mathematical field of game theory ....
, then professor of economics at the University of Vienna, later at Princeton University
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....
. In 1936, Alt developed an axiomatic foundation for economic concepts, described in “Ueber die Messbarkeit des Nutzens,” which he presented at the International Congress of Mathematicians
International Congress of Mathematicians
The International Congress of Mathematicians is the largest conference for the topic of mathematics. It meets once every four years, hosted by the International Mathematical Union ....
in Oslo
Oslo
Oslo is a municipality, as well as the capital and most populous city in Norway. As a municipality , it was established on 1 January 1838. Founded around 1048 by King Harald III of Norway, the city was largely destroyed by fire in 1624. The city was moved under the reign of Denmark–Norway's King...
.[Zeitschrift fuer Nationaloekonomie, VII/2, 1936; in German] This paper was also published as “On the Measurability of Utility” in Preferences, Utility, and Demand: A Minnesota Symposium (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1971).
New York
Alt left Austria at the time of its occupation by Nazi GermanyNazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...
in 1938 and came to New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
with his wife Alice Modern, whom he married just before leaving Vienna. In the next few years it was their highest priority to save relatives and friends endangered by the Nazi terror in Austria or Germany. This involved finding Americans willing to serve as sponsors for immigration visas, and they were successful in helping about 30 adults and children to escape.
Between 1938 and 1946 Alt worked for six years at the Econometric Institute in New York City, interrupted by two years of service in the United States Army
United States Army
The United States Army is the main branch of the United States Armed Forces responsible for land-based military operations. It is the largest and oldest established branch of the U.S. military, and is one of seven U.S. uniformed services...
. At the Econometric Institute he served successively as Research Principal and Assistant Director of Research engaged in the analysis of economic time series by methods such as multiple correlation
Multiple correlation
In statistics, multiple correlation is a linear relationship among more than two variables. It is measured by the coefficient of multiple determination, denoted as R2, which is a measure of the fit of a linear regression...
, used for business forecasting. He was concerned with the use of mathematical and statistical methods for the study and forecasting of business conditions in the economy as a whole and in a number of industries, commodity and security markets. One of the clients advised by Alt was the General Motors Corporation
General Motors
General Motors Company , commonly known as GM, formerly incorporated as General Motors Corporation, is an American multinational automotive corporation headquartered in Detroit, Michigan and the world's second-largest automaker in 2010...
.
Army - 10th Mountain Division to Aberdeen
When the United States entered World War IIWorld War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, he volunteered for military service but was at first rejected as an alien; he was drafted into the Army in 1943. (Citizenship was granted in 1944.) He then served in the elite 10th Mountain Division, trained for skiing, rock climbing and mountain fighting. Toward the end of the war he graduated from officers’ training as a Second Lieutenant.
While in military service he was assigned to the Army’s Aberdeen Proving Ground
Aberdeen Proving Ground
Aberdeen Proving Ground is a United States Army facility located near Aberdeen, Maryland, . Part of the facility is a census-designated place , which had a population of 3,116 at the 2000 census.- History :...
in 1945, in charge of planning for electronic computation. On discharge from the Army, he returned to the Econometric Institute for one year. As a civilian he returned to Aberdeen in 1946-48, and was Deputy Chief of the Computing Laboratory, which was a general-purpose mathematical service organization operating large digital and analog computing machines, punched card
Punched card
A punched card, punch card, IBM card, or Hollerith card is a piece of stiff paper that contains digital information represented by the presence or absence of holes in predefined positions...
installation, and data reduction
Data reduction
Data Reduction is the transformation of numerical or alphabetical digital information derived empirical or experimentally into a corrected, ordered, and simplified form....
facility.
National Bureau of Standards, Washington, DC
As Deputy Chief of the Computation Laboratory (1948–52), then of the Applied MathematicsApplied mathematics
Applied mathematics is a branch of mathematics that concerns itself with mathematical methods that are typically used in science, engineering, business, and industry. Thus, "applied mathematics" is a mathematical science with specialized knowledge...
Division (1952–67), he directed the early use of computers throughout the National Bureau of Standards and elsewhere in the federal government, as well as research in numerical analysis
Numerical analysis
Numerical analysis is the study of algorithms that use numerical approximation for the problems of mathematical analysis ....
, statistical engineering and some other branches of applied mathematics. From 1959 to 1961, he was one of the editors of the NBS Journal of Research
Journal of Research of the National Institute of Standards and Technology
The Journal of Research of the National Institute of Standards and Technology is the scientific journal of National Institute of Standards and Technology. The editor in chief is Theodore V. Vorburger....
.
For several years he also served as administrator of the Bureau of Standards’ program to award research grants in physics and chemistry in India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
, Pakistan
Pakistan
Pakistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan is a sovereign state in South Asia. It has a coastline along the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman in the south and is bordered by Afghanistan and Iran in the west, India in the east and China in the far northeast. In the north, Tajikistan...
and Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
, where foreign currency (PL 480) available for such purposes had been allocated to the Bureau.
Also during this time, he became interested in the use of computers for automatic translation of languages. This led to the founding of the Association for Computational Linguistics
Association for Computational Linguistics
The Association for Computational Linguistics is the international scientific and professional society for people working on problems involving natural language and computation. An annual meeting is held each summer in locations where significant computational linguistics research is carried out...
and to the organization of two international meetings jointly with a similar group in Japan, one in Washington, D.C., the other in Tokyo.
ACM – Association for Computing Machinery
Alt has a long history with the Association for Computing Machinery, known as ACM. He was one of its founders and served as its third president (1950–52). He was editor of its Journal (1954–58). Alt was the first recipient of its Distinguished Service Award (1970). In 1994, he was in the first group to be inducted as a Fellow of the ACM. Alt represented ACM on the National Research Council from 1961 to 1964. He is also a member of the American Mathematical SocietyAmerican Mathematical Society
The American Mathematical Society is an association of professional mathematicians dedicated to the interests of mathematical research and scholarship, which it does with various publications and conferences as well as annual monetary awards and prizes to mathematicians.The society is one of the...
, and formerly a member of the American Statistical Association
American Statistical Association
The American Statistical Association , is the main professional US organization for statisticians and related professions. It was founded in Boston, Massachusetts on November 27, 1839, and is the second oldest, continuously operating professional society in the United States...
, Institute of Mathematical Statistics
Institute of Mathematical Statistics
The Institute of Mathematical Statistics is an international professional and scholarly society devoted to the development, dissemination, and application of statistics and probability. The Institute currently has about 4,000 members in all parts of the world...
, Econometric Society
Econometric Society
The Econometric Society is an international society for the advancement of economic theory in its relation with statistics and mathematics. It was founded on December 29, 1930 at the Stalton Hotel in Cleveland, Ohio....
, and Association for Computational Linguistics.
Alt has written and been interviewed about the history of ACM several times. He wrote “Fifteen Years ACM: The development years of ACM, as recounted in 1962 by founding member and former president Franz L. Alt, depicts the players and progress of an organization committed to sharing computing knowledge and skills” (Communications of the ACM, June 1962, Vol.5 #6; reprinted October 1987, Vol. 30 #10).
Alt was interviewed in 1969 by Uta C. Merzbach for the Computer Oral History Collection at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History(http://invention.smithsonian.org/downloads/fa_cohc_tr_alt690224.pdf). Oral History Transcript at Niels Bohr Archives, American Institute of Physics
American Institute of Physics
The American Institute of Physics promotes science, the profession of physics, publishes physics journals, and produces publications for scientific and engineering societies. The AIP is made up of various member societies...
, 24 Feb. And 13 March 1969.
For the 25th anniversary of the founding of ACM, Alt wrote “Archeology of Computers: Reminiscences, 1945-47" (Communications of the ACM, July 1972, Vol. 15 #7).
We had succeeded in obtaining John von Neumann
John von Neumann
John von Neumann was a Hungarian-American mathematician and polymath who made major contributions to a vast number of fields, including set theory, functional analysis, quantum mechanics, ergodic theory, geometry, fluid dynamics, economics and game theory, computer science, numerical analysis,...
as keynote speaker [for the first national meeting of the ACM]. He discussed the need for, and likely impact of, electronic computing. He mentioned the “new programming method” for ENIAC
ENIAC
ENIAC was the first general-purpose electronic computer. It was a Turing-complete digital computer capable of being reprogrammed to solve a full range of computing problems....
and explained that its seemingly small vocabulary was in fact ample; that future computers, then in the design stage, would get along on a dozen instruction types, and this was known to be adequate for expressing all of mathematics. . . Von Neumann went on to say that one need not be surprised at this small number, since about 1,000 words were known to be adequate for most situations of real life, and mathematics was only a small part of life, and a very simple part at that. This caused some hilarity in the audience, which provoked von Neumann to say: “If people do not believe that mathematics is simple, it is only because they do not realize how complicated life is."
Alt was interviewed in 1995 by Janet Benton (excerpted as “Franz Alt Remembers the Early Years of Computing and the Creation of ACM,” ACMMemberNet Supplement to Communications of the ACM, Feb. 1996, Vol. 39 #2).
For JACM’s 50th Anniversary, he contributed “Journal of the ACM–The Beginnings” (Journal of the ACM, Jan. 2003, Vol. 50 #1).
American Institute of Physics, New York
In 1967, distressed by the war in VietnamVietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
, he left the United States Government for the position of Deputy Director of the Information Division of the American Institute of Physics in New York. There he was instrumental in establishing a computerized information system on papers in the physics journal literature, including hierarchical classification, subject indexing and a citation index.
Retirement
After his retirement in 1973, he did volunteer work for peace and justice organizations, with an emphasis on work for peace in Southeast Asia and anti-nuclear work, particularly for Clergy and Laity Concerned About Vietnam (1976–91) [Sheila Collins, “A Man for All Seasons: A Tribute to Franz Alt,” CALC Report, October 1988]. Throughout he continued to pursue his lifelong hobbies of hiking, climbing and skiing, as well as playing violin and viola in chamber music. He turned 100Centenarian
A centenarian is a person who is or lives beyond the age of 100 years. Because current average life expectancies across the world are less than 100, the term is invariably associated with longevity. Much rarer, a supercentenarian is a person who has lived to the age of 110 or more, something only...
in November 2010.
Recognitions
Alt was interviewed by Reinhard Siegmund-Schultze for his history of German and Austrian mathematicians who fled from Hitler. Mathematiker auf der Flucht vor Hitler: Quellen und Studien zur Emigration einer Wissenschaft, (Deutsche Mathematiker-Vereinigung, 1998). Expanded and translated into English as Mathematicians Fleeing from Nazi Germany: Individual Fates and Global Impact (Princeton University Press, 2009).In 1998, Alt attended the International Congress of Mathematicians in Berlin as the guest of the Deutsche Mathematiker-Vereinigung (German Mathematical Society
German Mathematical Society
The German Mathematical Society is the main professional society of German mathematicians.The society was founded on 18 September 1890.Georg Cantor was one of the founders and in his honor the society awards the Cantor medal.-External links:*...
) in connection with its exhibition “Terror and Exile: Persecution and Expulsion of Mathematicians from Berlin between 1933-1945."
Die Oesterreichische Mathematische Gesellschaft (the Austrian Mathematical Society
Austrian Mathematical Society
The Austrian Mathematical Society is the national mathematical society of Austria and a member society of the European Mathematical Society.-History:...
) invited him to attend the 2001 joint meeting in Vienna of the German and Austrian mathematical societies in conjunction with the exhibition “Vienna 1938 and the Exodus of Mathematicians.” At the opening of the exhibition, he spoke of his recollections [“Personliche Erinnerungen an 1938," Internationale Mathematische Nachrichten, Nr. 188 (2001), 1-7 www.oemg.ac.at/IMN/imn188.pdf]
In May 2007, Chancellor Alfred Gusenbauer
Alfred Gusenbauer
Alfred Gusenbauer is an Austrian career politician who until 2008 spent his entire professional life as an employee of the Social Democratic Party of Austria or as a parliamentary representative. He headed the SPÖ from 2000 to 2008, and served as Chancellor of Austria from January 2007 to...
conferred on Alt the “Ehrenkreuz fuer Wissenschaft und Kunst I. Klasse,” the highest distinction for science and art in Austria. In a symposium in the University Dr. Karl Sigmund
Karl Sigmund
Karl Sigmund is a Professor of Mathematics at the University of Vienna and one of the pioneers of evolutionary game theory.-Career:...
, professor of mathematics of the University of Vienna, spoke of Alt’s place in the history of mathematics in Vienna between the wars. Dr. Walter Schachermayer, then of the Vienna University of Technology
Vienna University of Technology
Vienna University of Technology is one of the major universities in Vienna, the capital of Austria. Founded in 1815 as the "Imperial-Royal Polytechnic Institute" , it currently has about 26,200 students , 8 faculties and about 4,000 staff members...
, spoke about Alt’s paper “On the Measurement of Utility,” presented at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Oslo in 1936, and its relation to the work of John von Neumann, Oscar Morgenstern and Kenneth Arrow
Kenneth Arrow
Kenneth Joseph Arrow is an American economist and joint winner of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics with John Hicks in 1972. To date, he is the youngest person to have received this award, at 51....
, and recent developments in the notion of coherent risk measure
Risk measure
A Risk measure is used to determine the amount of an asset or set of assets to be kept in reserve. The purpose of this reserve is to make the risks taken by financial institutions, such as banks and insurance companies, acceptable to the regulator...
s. [SAA [Standards Alumni Association] Newsletter, June 2007, p. 19].
While he was in Vienna in May 2007, Alt spoke to students of his old gymnasium, the Stubenbastei. The school established the Franz Alt Preis in his honor. The prize is awarded in two categories, Science and Mathematics and Human Rights and Justice, for papers written by graduating students, and has been awarded annually since 2008.
External links
- Austrian Heritage Collection: digital.cjh.org/R/?func=collections-results+collection_id=1249' Search “Alt”
- “A Conversation with Franz Alt,” May 19, 1997, with Annice Alt, Seymour Kass, Berthold Schweizer, Abe Sklar [recollections of Karl Menger, the Menger Colloquium, Kurt Godel, Abraham Wald, and the University of Vienna prior to 1938]. Archives of Scientific Philosophy, document number ASP MC 01-02.