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Professor Thomas C. Schelling

Professor Thomas C. Schelling was born in 1921. He graduated from the University of California, Berkeley in 1944 and obtained his PhD in economics from Harvard University in 1951.

Professor Schelling began his career in 1945, working for the U.S. Bureau of the Budget, and later served as an advisor in the Truman administration. He taught for many years at Yale and Harvard. He is now Distinguished University Professor, Emeritus in the Department of Economics and the School of Public Policy of the University of Maryland, and Lucius N. Littauer Professor of Political Economy, Emeritus of Harvard University.

Professor Schelling has published widely on military strategy, arms control, energy and environmental policy, climate change, nuclear proliferation, terrorism, organized crime, foreign aid, international trade, conflict and bargaining theory, racial segregation and integration, the military draft, health policy, tobacco and drugs policy, and ethical issues in public policy and in business.

Against the backdrop of the nuclear arms race in the late 1950s, his book The Strategy of Conflict set forth his vision of game theory as a unifying framework for the social sciences. He showed that a party can strengthen its position by overtly worsening its own options, that the capability to retaliate can be more useful than the ability to resist an attack, and that uncertain retaliation is more credible and more efficient than certain retaliation. These insights have proven to be of great relevance for conflict resolution and efforts to avoid war. In 2005, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics “for having enhanced our understanding of conflict and cooperation through game-theory analysis”.

Besides, he has received the Frank E. Seidman Distinguished Award in Political Economy and the National Academy of Sciences Award for Behavioral Research Relevant to the Prevention of Nuclear War.