Clyde Coombs

Clyde Hamilton Coombs (July 22, 1912 – February 4, 1988) was an American psychologist specializing in the field of mathematical psychology. He devised a voting system, that was hence named Coombs' method.

Coombs founded the Mathematical Psychology program at the University of Michigan, and his students included the late Amos Tversky, Robyn Dawes, and Baruch Fischhoff, all important researchers in Decision Sciences. The classic text "An Introduction to Mathematical Psychology," by Coombs, Dawes, and Tversky was a must for Michigan graduate students in Mathematical and Experimental Psychology.

In 1959 he was elected as a Fellow of the American Statistical Association.

Selected bibliography

• Coombs, Clyde H.; Thrall, Robert M.; Raiffa, Howard, eds. (1954). Decision processes. New York: Wiley. OCLC 639321.