B-School Professor Schlaifer Dies at 79

Ziegler Professor of Business Administration Emeritus Robert O. Schlaifer died of lung cancer on July 24 at the age of 79.

In the 1960s, Schlaifer co-founded with Howard Raiffa, a fellow Business School professor, the study of Managerial Economics, which focuses on a systematic analysis of the economic aspects of business.

Schlaifer first taught at Harvard in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences in the departments of economics, history and physics from 1940 to 1943. After that he worked at Harvard's Underwater Sound Laboratory as a physicist until 1947, going along with it when it was relocated to Pennsylvania State University in 1945.

He joined the Business School faculty as a research fellow in 1947, gain- ing an assistant professorship a year later. Heretired in 1985.

Schlaifer received a Distinguished ServiceAward from the Business School in 1991, theschool's highest honor.

Schlaifer's book Probability and Statisticsfor Business Decisions, published in 1959, isconsidered a classic in the field. Other booksinclude Analysis of Decisions Under Uncertaintyand Introduction to Statistical DecisionTheory, the latter co-written with Raiffa.

Schlaifer was born in Vermillion, South Dakotain 1914. He graduated from Amherst College in 1934and earned a Ph.D in ancient history from Harvardin 1940.

He was also a Coolidge Fellow at the AmericanSchool of Classical Studies from 1937 to 1939.

Schlaifer is survived by his wife, Genevieve D.Schlaifer, his two children--Peter Schlaifer, ofNew York City, and Renee Westland, of Keene,N.H.--as well as by three grandchildren

Schlaifer received a Distinguished ServiceAward from the Business School in 1991, theschool's highest honor.

Schlaifer's book Probability and Statisticsfor Business Decisions, published in 1959, isconsidered a classic in the field. Other booksinclude Analysis of Decisions Under Uncertaintyand Introduction to Statistical DecisionTheory, the latter co-written with Raiffa.

Schlaifer was born in Vermillion, South Dakotain 1914. He graduated from Amherst College in 1934and earned a Ph.D in ancient history from Harvardin 1940.

He was also a Coolidge Fellow at the AmericanSchool of Classical Studies from 1937 to 1939.

Schlaifer is survived by his wife, Genevieve D.Schlaifer, his two children--Peter Schlaifer, ofNew York City, and Renee Westland, of Keene,N.H.--as well as by three grandchildren