Karl Wolfgang Deutsch. Social and political scientist, born in Prague (Czech Republic), on 21, July, 1912, died in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States on 1, November, 1992. Deutsch graduated in Law at the Deutschen Universität in Prague in 1934, and obtained a PhD in Government at Univerzita Karlova (Charles University) also in Prague in 1938; this same year he and his wife Ruth, whom he had married in 1936, emigrated to the United States. In 1939 Deutsch obtained a scholarship to carry out advanced studies at Harvard University where he received a second PhD in political science in 1951. Deutsch taught at MIT from 1945 to 1956; at Yale until 1967 and at Harvard until 1971, and later as Stanfield Professor Emeritus of International Peace, until his death.

Deutsch is one of the most notable figures in the political science scenario of the 20th century. He participated in the San Francisco conference that resulted in the creation of the United Nations in 1945; he was a member of the board of World Society Foundation (Zurich, Switzerland) since 1984. He was elected President of the American Political Science Association in 1969, of the International Political Science Association in 1976, and of the Society for General Systems Research in 1983. From 1977 to 1987, he was Director of the International Institute of Comparative Social Research at the Science Centre in Berlin. His life work was dedicated to the scientific study of war and peace, nationalism, co-operation and communication. He is also well known for his interest in introducing quantitative methods and formal system analysis and model-thinking into the rather rhetoric field of political -and social- sciences.

Books published (incomplete list)

Nationalism and social communication, from his dissertation at Harvard, 1953, 1966; The nerves of government: models of political communication and control, 1963, 1966; Arms control and the Atlantic Alliance, 1967; The analysis of international relations, 1968, 1978; Nationalism and its alternatives, 1969; Politics and government, 1970, 1974, 1980; Tides among nations, 1979; in 1981 he published his autobiographical sketch Voyage of the mind, 1930–1980.

In 1977, while working with Bruno Fritsch, Helio Jaguaribe, and Andrei S. Markovits, he edited: Problems of word modelling: political and social implications, a book derived from a conference at Harvard University held in 1976, where extensive work and examples about the application of simulation and system dynamics models to the study of social, political, and economic problems and issues, were discussed. This is the same subject matter of what is known as wicked problems, and built upon earlier efforts at world modelling such as those advanced and advocated by the Club of Rome: Donella H. Meadows, et al. (1972), Limits to Growth, and M. Mesarovic and E. Pestel (1974), Mankind at the turning point.

References

[1] Dieter Senghaas. Politik mit wachen Sinnen betreiben! Eine Erinnerung an Karl W. Deutsch (1912–1992). WZB-Mitteilungen 99 · März 2003. http://www.wz-berlin.de/publikation/pdf/wm99/14-17.pdf

[2] Back cover of book Problemas para el modelo del mundo (Spanish edition, 1990, of Karl W. Deutsch (editor). 1977. Problems of world modelling). Universidad Externado de Colombia, Fondo Cultural CEREC, 1990. Bogotá, Colombia.

[3] Karl Wolfgang Deutsch. July 21, 1912 — November 1, 1992. By Richard L. Merritt, Bruce M. Russett, and Robert A. Dahl. Biographical Memoirs. National Academy of Sciences. http://books.nap.edu/html/biomems/kdeutsch.html