Robert W. Rosenthal (1945 - February 7, 2002) was an American economist, most known for his contributions to game theory.
He obtained a B.A. in political economy from Johns Hopkins University (1966), M.S. (1968) and Ph.D. (1971) in operations research from Stanford University, advised by Robert B. Wilson.[1] He worked as assistant professor in the department of Industrial Engineering and management science at Northwestern University (1970-76), was member of the technical staff at Bell Labs (1976-83), was professor of economics at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (1983-84), State University of New York at Stony Brook (1984-87) and Boston University where worked until his death from a heart attack (1987-2002).[2] He also had appointments with Massachusetts Institute of Technology (2000), Harvard University (1993), and Catholic University of Louvain (1973). He held a Fulbright chair in economics at University of Siena (2001).
He authored many journal articles, and defined the revelation principle and random matching, as applied in works with Henry Landau.[3] Also, he was associate editor of Games and Economic Behavior (1988-2002), Journal of Economic Theory (1999–2002), Mathematics of Operations Research (1981-88) and Operations Research: A Journal of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (1978-82).