Robin Farquharson
Reginald "Robin" Farquharson (3 October 1930 – 1 April 1973) was an academic whose interest in mathematics and politics led him to work on game theory, which he wrote an influential analysis of voting systems in his doctoral thesis, later published as Theory of Voting.
Farquharson diagnosed himself as suffering from bipolar disorder (manic depression), and episodes of mania made it difficult for him to obtain a permanent position at a university and also resulted in him losing commercial employment. In later years, Farquharson dropped out of mainstream society, and became a prominent counter-cultural figure in late-60s London. Farquharson wrote an account of his unconventional life in his 1968 book, Drop Out!, in which he described a week of being homeless in London. In 1973 Robin Farquharson died from the burns associated with an arson, for which two persons were convicted of unlawful killing.
Read more about Robin Farquharson: Schooling, Research On Voting, Mental Illness, Later Life and Work, Autobiographical Drop Out!, Political Activity, The Squat Years, Death From Arson, In Popular Culture
Famous quotes containing the word robin:
“It is now many years that men have resorted to the forest for fuel and the materials of the arts: the New Englander and the New Hollander, the Parisian and the Celt, the farmer and Robin Hood, Goody Blake and Harry Gill; in most parts of the world, the prince and the peasant, the scholar and the savage, equally require still a few sticks from the forest to warm them and cook their food. Neither could I do without them.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)