Jon Elster, the influential political theorist, has joined the faculty of Columbia University as Robert K. Merton Professor of the Social Sciences.

The apppointment was made by the Columbia Trustees and announced by President George Rupp.

A leading interpreter of rational choice theory, Professor Elster, 55, is the first incumbent of the Merton chair, named for the eminent social scientist and University Professor Emeritus at Columbia, now 85, who founded the sociological study of science, originated the concept of the self-fulfilling prophecy and initiated traditions of research on bureacracy, anomie and the history of ideas. The chair was established by the Columbia trustees in 1990.

Professor Elster has been the Edward L. Ryerson Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago since 1989. In nine widely translated books and more than 100 articles and reviews, the Norwegian-born scholar has drawn from multiple disciplines, including economics and psychology, to explain political behavior. He has explained political actions by studying the way individuals make choices and how groups of individuals interact, going beyond traditional examinations of behavior by social class and political category. His work has been translated into eight languages.

A formative influence on a new generation of political scholars, Professor Elster has received support from the Norwegian and French governments and the Russell Sage Foundation for wide-ranging research on democracy and social planning, rationality, Marxism, intertemporal choice, the distributive consequences of unemployment, the allocation of children in divorce and child welfare cases, strategic aspects of collective wage bargaining, and addiction.

Jon Elster was born in 1940 in Oslo and received the M.A. in philosophy in 1966 from the University of Oslo and the Ph.D. from the Sorbonne in Paris in 1972. Later, he taught at both institutions and has been a visiting professor at the University of California at Berkeley, Stanford University, the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris and the California Institute of Technology and a visiting fellow at All Souls College, Oxford University.

He has lectured worldwide and is a member of the Norwegian Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and Academia Europaea and a fellow of the British Academy. He is research director of the Institute for Social Research in Oslo and director of the Center for Ethics, Rationality and Society at the University of Chicago.

His books include "Local Justice" (1992), "Political Psychology" (1990), "Nuts and Bolts for the Social Sciences" (1989), "Solomonic Judgements" (1989), "The Cement of Society" (1989), "An Introduction to Karl Marx" (1986), "Making Sense of Marx" (1985), "Sour Grapes" (1983), "Explaining Technical Change" (1983), "Ulysses and the Sirens" (1979) and "Leibniz et la Formation de l'Esprit Capitaliste (1975).

He is co-editor of "Studies in Rationality and Social Change" and "Studies in Marxism and Social Theory," published by Cambridge University Press. He is a member of the editorial board of 12 journals.

This fall, Professor Elster will teach courses on rational choice theory and the constitution-making process.

9.8.95
18,707