Good Choice: R. Duncan Luce chose mathematical behavioral science as a career despite the uncertainty of its future at the time.
By Richard Hébert
Luckily for science, as a child R. Duncan Luce had astigmatism and parents who didn’t think much of art as a career choice. Otherwise, he might have ended up a fighter pilot or an artist instead of a pioneer in mathematical behavioral science. As it is, during his career he has focused on constructing and testing mathematical models of the commonalities among people.
In a third-person biographical note written in 1989, Luce recalled his youth in Scranton, Pennsylvania. “Airplanes and painting consumed much time and attention but parental influence weighed strongly against an art career, for which both the world and he can be thankful, and astigmatism ruled out military flying.”
The future recipient of the National Science Medal started out with good genes as a member of a family of risk-takers. His father was first cousin to Time magazine founder Henry Luce, and he described a vague memory of meeting the publisher’s father during childhood. The elder Luce, who had been a missionary in China, “took out a big piece of heavy paper and drew a bunch of Chinese characters and explained what they were.”
Luce started his career in a field diametrically opposed to the behavioral sciences. The future APS Fellow, Charter Member, William James Fellow Award recipient, and Board Member (1989-1991) initially planned a career in aeronautical engineering, his undergraduate degree field. After graduating from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Luce spent time in the Navy during World War II. Following the war, the Navy paid his way through an accelerated engineering program. Luce then completed midshipman school at Notre Dame, and Catapult and Arresting Gear School in Philadelphia, where he learned how to guide airplane launches and landings on aircraft carriers.
This was followed by the shake-down cruise on the carrier USS Kearsarge from Brooklyn to Guantanamo, Cuba. “I was essentially a passenger,” recalled Luce, because the Navy thought it wiser to entrust launches and landings to an experienced officer instead of “a very green ensign.”
After his discharge, Luce returned to MIT for graduate study in applied mathematics, but was unsure of his goal. He knew he didn’t want to do physical science applications or be a pure mathematician. “Economics was one possibility,” he said. “The other was psychology. I didn’t know very much about either.”