 | Professor Peter Hammond
Marie Curie Professor, Department of Economics, University of Warwick (S2) Dynamic models in decision and game theory, with applications to normative economics, mechanism design, statistical models with many agents, social choice, ethics, unmodelled events, and experimental economics
Peter J. (for Jackson) Hammond was born in Marple, then in Cheshire, now in Greater Manchester, a few hours after the end of World War II in Western Europe. He was the first child of the late Fred J. Hammond (chartered accountant) and Elsie Hammond (who had worked in the trustee department of a bank). He was taken to Kingskerswell, Devon before he could walk or talk. In 1949 his twin brothers Brian and Nigel were born nearby in Newton Abbot. He then left Devon for Ipswich, Suffolk at the age of 5, having meanwhile learned the rudiments of reading, writing (right-handed), arithmetic, and cricket (left-handed). After another family move from Ipswich to Croydon, his university career began in 1964 studying first mathematics (as an Open Scholar), then economics at Trinity Hall, Cambridge. Earlier in life he displayed much more enthusiasm than ability in several ball games, then chess, and mountain walking. Starting in 1965 he began a gradual transition from playing games toward still continuing attempts to understand game theory. Soon this developed into formally studying the application of game theory, and of mathematical and probabilistic tools more generally, first to economics, then social choice theory, other social sciences, even philosophy. In 1972 he met Mrudula Patel, born 1952 in Gujarat, India, who studied Economics at the University of Essex, then Nuffield College, Oxford. They married in August 1979 when Mrudula was Mervyn King's research associate at the University of Birmingham, just before moving to Stanford in California. Mrudula gave up economics soon after finishing a PhD at the University of Essex in 1990. She recently became interested in oil painting. Peter is fortunate to have been encouraged throughout life to acquire interests in many forms of human endeavour and learning, during an age with no shortage of fascinating and worthwhile new ideas, not least in contemporary economics. He has also benefited from many contacts with the international community of scholars. Apart from several decades in California, there have been academic visits long enough to justify opening temporary bank accounts in Australia, Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Israel, Italy, and Japan. On joining the Fellows of the British Academy, he is happy to share credit for this great honour with a wide circle of teachers, advisers, and colleagues whose generosity with their time, wisdom, confidence and support has made this possible. It is also a welcome reminder of one's duty to ensure that important guiding principles and ideas continue to be passed on to the next generation. Not least, it emphasises the need to ensure that similar opportunities for an academic career remain available to those most able to benefit from them. A temptation he resists less than he should is to essay epigrammatic one-liners such as 'Dreams defy reality', 'Automata err automatically', and even 'Britain is one hour and several years behind Europe' whenever yet another train is seriously delayed. Finally, he wonders why educators fail to emphasise their role in improving leisure. |
