Roth, Alvin E., 1951-....

Roth is the George Gund Professor of Economics and Business Administration at Harvard University. His research interests include game theory, experimental economics, and market design.

Alvin Roth was born on Dec. 18, 1951. He graduated from Columbia University in 1971, and earned a masters (1973) and Ph.D. (1974) from Stanford University in operations research. Roth went on to teach economics and business administration at the University of Illinois from 1974-1982, and at the University of Pittsburgh from 1982-1998. In 1998, he became full faculty at Harvard University, and remains there today.

Roth's work focuses on game theory, market design, and experimental economics. He has worked on a variety of real-world projects, including the National Resident Matching Program (NRMP) system, responsible for matching medical residents with respective programs; the New York City and Boston public school systems' high school assignment selection methods; and the New England Program for kidney exchanges between incompatible partners. He is a Guggenheim Fellow (1983-1984), an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow (1984-1986), and a fellow at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has won the Texas Instruments' Foundation Founders' Prize (1980) and the Operations Research Society of America's Lanchester Prize (1991). In 2012, he and Lloyd Shapley won the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Honor of Alfred Nobel (commonly known as the Nobel Prize) for their work in "the theory of stable allocations and the practice of market design." He has also authored numerous books and over 70 peer-reviewed journal articles.