Submitted by Rapoport or his agent · Public domain

A mathematical psychologist who helped found general systems theory, applying the same formal tools to arms races, animal populations, and the spread of disease. His stochastic models of contagion gave epidemiologists and sociologists a shared mathematical language for how ideas, infections, and conflicts propagate through a population. Rapoport's career sat at the intersection of mathematics and biology at a time when few scholars moved comfortably between the two fields.