Michael John Scriven (/ˈskrɪvən/; 28 March 1928 – 28 August 2023) was a British-born Australian polymath and academic philosopher, best known for his contributions to the theory and practice of evaluation.
He held BSc (1948) and MS (1950) degrees in mathematics from the University of Melbourne, where he was in residence at Trinity College from 1946, winning an entrance scholarship.
"It seemed to me, in short, that consideration and evaluation of goals was an unnecessary but also a possibly contaminating step.
I began to work on an alternative approach – simply, the evaluation of actual effects against (typically) a profile of demonstrated needs in this region of education."
He wrote over 400 scholarly publications and served on the editorial review boards of 42 journals.