Robert Duncan Luce (May 16, 1925 – August 11, 2012)[1] was an American mathematician and social scientist, and one of the most preeminent figures in the field of mathematical psychology.
At the end of his life, he held the position of Distinguished Research Professor of Cognitive Science at the University of California, Irvine.
[2] Luce received a Bachelor of Science degree in Aeronautical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1945, and PhD in Mathematics from the same university in 1950 under Irvin S. Cohen[3] with thesis On Semigroups.
He began his professorial career at Columbia University in 1954, where he was an assistant professor in mathematical statistics and sociology.
[4] Contributions for which Luce is known include formulating Luce's choice axiom formalizing the principle that additional options should not affect the probability of selecting one item over another, defining semiorders, introducing graph-theoretic methods into the social sciences, and coining the term "clique" for a complete subgraph in graph theory.