[1] In his senior year, the 6'3" Downs played as a guard on the Shimer Pioneers basketball team.
[4] After graduation, Downs served in the United States Air Force as a fighter pilot from 1967 to 1971.
[5] He then moved to Princeton, where he served as Boswell Professor of Peace and War in the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs from 1987 to 1998.
[1] According to political scientist and Downs' colleague, Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, Downs was "the first scholar to use non-cooperative game theory to model the effects of domestic uncertainty on international negotiations and to identify how to use tacit bargaining ... to resolve disputes and arms races without coercion.
[2] Downs died of heart failure on January 21, 2015, shortly after falling asleep after watching the State of the Union Address.