Nationality United States Name J.C.C. McKinsey | Known for Game theory | |
Fields Mathematical logic
Game theory Institutions RAND Corporation, Stanford University Alma mater New York University, University of California Doctoral advisor Benjamin Abram Bernstein Doctoral students Jean Rubin
William Wernick Died October 26, 1953, Palo Alto, California, United States Residence Palo Alto, California, United States Books Introduction to the Theory of Games Education University of California, Berkeley (1936), New York University Awards Guggenheim Fellowship for Natural Sciences, US & Canada | ||
John Charles Chenoweth McKinsey (30 April 1908 – 26 October 1953) (also known as J. C. C. McKinsey or Chen McKinsey) was an American mathematician known for his work on mathematical logic and game theory. He also made significant contributions to modal logic.
Biography
McKinsey received B.S. and M.S. degrees from New York University and a Ph.D. degree in 1936 from the University of California, Berkeley. He was a Blumenthal Research Fellow at New York University from 1936 to 1937 and a Guggenheim Fellow from 1942 to 1943. He also taught at Montana State College, and in Nevada, then Oklahoma, and in 1947 he went "to a research group at Douglas Aircraft Corporation" that later became the RAND Corporation
McKinsey worked at RAND until he was fired in 1951. The FBI considered him a security risk because he was a homosexual, in spite of the fact that he was an open homosexual who had been in a committed relationship for years. He complained to his superior "How can anyone threaten me with disclosure when everybody already knows?" From 1951 he taught at Stanford University, where he was later appointed a Full Professor in the Department of Philosophy, where he worked with Patrick Suppes on the axiomatic foundations of classical mechanics. He committed suicide at his home in Palo Alto in 1953.