Richard McKelvey

Richard Drummond McKelvey (1944-2002) was a political scientist who specialised in mathematical theories of voting and decision making. He took a bachelor degree in mathematics at Oberlin College, a master degree in mathematics at Washington University in St. Louis and a doctorate in political science at the University of Rochester, and spent his later career as the Edie and Lew Wasserman Professor of Political Science at the California Institute of Technology until he died of cancer in 2002. He wrote influential papers on the instability of majority rule; the McKelvey theorem shows that, by choosing the order of decisions, an agenda setter can steer a majority vote to almost any outcome. With Thomas Palfrey he developed quantal response equilibrium for games. He was a fellow of the Econometric Society, and a 2007 volume collected his most influential papers.