Albert William Tucker (28 November 1905 - 25 January, 1995) was a Canadian born American mathematician.

He created the most well-known game theoretic paradox prisoner's dilemma in 1950.

He was born in Ontario,Canada.

He earned his B.A. at the University of Toronto in 1928. In 1932, he completed his Ph.D. at the Princeton University under the supervision of Solomon Lefschetz, with the thesis An Abstract Approach to Manifolds, and joined the faculty of Princeton University in 1933.

In 1932-33 he was a National Research Fellow at Cambridge, Harvard, and the University of Chicago.

His Ph.D. students include Michel Balinski , David Gale, Alan Goldman , Stephen Maurer , Marvin Minsky, Nobel Prize winner John Nash, and Torrence Parsons.

He made important contributions in topology, game theory and non-linear programming.

He died in Highstown, N.J. in 1995 at age 89.

• He was at Princeton right from the beginning of their Golden Age in 1928, through 1970. There is almost no one who was there that whole time. He also knew everyone and remembered everything so he was a great source for oral histories of the mathematics community.

• He chaired the math department for about 20 years.

• He was president of the MAA.

• He was heavily involved in math education throughout the 60s, both as chair of the AP Calculus committee for the College Board(1960-63), through work with CUPM of the MAA, and through lots of NSF summer workshops both for college teachers and high school teachers.

• He is well know for the Kuhn-Tucker optimality conditions , a basic result in non-linear programming, which was published in conference proceedings, rather than in a journal.

• He received an honorary degree from Dartmouth College.

External Links

• News from PRINCETON UNIVERSITY
• Mathematics Genealogy Project
• A Guide to Albert William Tucker Papers
• Extract from an obituary
• Kuhn Tucker conditions