Richard McKelvey passes away

Richard McKelvey, Caltech’s Wasserman Professor of Political Science and director of the William D. Hacker Social Science Experimental Laboratory, died of cancer at his Altadena home on Monday, April 22. He was 57.

“He was a leader in the development of a scientific approach to political science,” said John Ledyard, chair of the Division of the Humanities and Social Sciences. “He also contributed significantly to theories of voting in committees and voting behavior.

“He was one of the nicest, most honest and unselfish people that you could have as faculty,” said Ledyard, who had known McKelvey for 25 years. “He was a good person. You don’t say that very often about people, but he was.”

McKelvey’s contributions to the social sciences were fundamental and wide-ranging. He was best known for his leading role in the development of mathematical theories of voting, and he also made important advances in game theory, social-choice theory, experimental political science, and computational economics.

In one notable paper, McKelvey showed that decisions made under one-person/one-vote, majority-rule democratic systems do not necessarily cluster around “middle-ground” policy outcomes, as had always been assumed. Rather, decisions are very sensitive to such details of process as who controls the agenda. As a result, nearly any outcome, even unpopular ones, can result from agenda manipulation.

For this and other contributions to political science, McKelvey was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1993. Other honors included election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and as a fellow of the Econometric Society, and he was named a Caltech Sherman Fairchild Distinguished Scholar in 1978, a year before joining the Institute faculty.

McKelvey was a pioneer in the use of laboratory experiments and computational techniques to test theories of voting and other group behavior. Most recently, he was in the process of initiating a contest called a Turing tournament, designed to improve the ability to predict people’s behavior in strategic situations.

Not only was McKelvey an innovative scholar, he will also be remembered as a devoted educator. Highly sought as a PhD advisor, he spent countless hours working with his students, many of whom now hold professorships at leading universities and carry on his approach to social-scientific inquiry.

Born April 27, 1944, McKelvey graduated from Oberlin College with a bachelor’s degree in mathematics in 1966. He earned an MA in mathematics from Washington University in St. Louis in 1967, and a PhD in political science from the University of Rochester in 1971. After serving on the faculties of the University of Rochester and Carnegie Mellon University, he joined Caltech in 1979 as a full professor, and was awarded the Wasserman Chair in 1998.

He is survived by his wife, Stephenie Frederick, and three children, Kirk, Christopher, and Holly.
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