Thomas L. Saaty (1926 - 2017)

Distinguished Professor Thomas Saaty died on the 14th of August 2017 after a year-long battle against cancer. He made an unprecedented impact on the decision making world.

Professor Thomas L. Saaty was born in Mosul, in British-administered Iraq in 1926.

Education

• BA, Columbia Union College, 1948
• MS, Physics, The Catholic University of America, 1949
• MA, Mathematics, Yale University, 1951
• Post-graduate study, University of Paris, 1952-53
• PhD, Mathematics, Yale University, 1953

The Creative Decisions Foundation was established in 1996 by Thomas L. Saaty and his wife Rozann Whitaker Saaty. Dr. Saaty holds the chair of Distinguished University Professor, Katz School of Business, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA. The Foundation is a 501 (c) (3) private foundation with a purpose of educating people in the world to help them make more rational decisions.

Thomas L. Saaty is the creator of the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), a method for measuring intangibles by making judgments on pairs of elements with respect to a property they have in common. In multi-criteria problems these measures are combined using a hierarchical or network structure to choose the best of several alternatives. By using the AHP, multi-criteria performance measures can be developed to measure the potential benefits of projects and initiatives so that resources can be deployed where they are most likely to achieve the greatest return. The strength of Dr. Saaty's method is its ability to measure intangibles. It brings mathematical precision and science to answer the murky, complex, multi-dimensional decisions that occur during constantly changing conditions. In essence, his method quantifies the value of different choices, and creates a framework in which people can prioritize the factors in a decision without becoming overwhelmed by the tradeoffs.

His AHP accomplishes this grand achievement through structuring, prioritization, scenario analysis, and resource allocation. The process helps prioritize decision attributes by using unique pairwise comparisons that derive a numerical value for the alternatives in a decision, prioritizing and ranking them. Dr. Saaty has always been concerned with validating his work, and to that end, he has produced hundreds of validation examples to demonstrate that his pairwise comparison approach is a more accurate method for prioritization than simply assigning ordinal numbers.

The Foundation sponsors education, research and software development in advanced methods of decision-making involving the AHP. Of particular interest are group decision-making on societal issues, conflict resolution, and optimizing the allocation of resources for private and government organizations. Thomas L. Saaty generalized the AHP, which is based on hierarchical modeling, to the Analytic Network Process (ANP) for decision-making with dependence and feedback, and the Neural Network Process (NNP) for neural decision processing.The Foundation recognizes and supports educators, authors and practitioners who work in these areas.

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