Arrow's Impossibility Theorem
There is no fair way to turn what a group of people each want into what the group wants. This is not a complaint about politics. It is a theorem.
1950 (paper), 1951 (book), 1963 (corrected second edition)25 min read
American mathematical economics
Kenneth Arrow
1921 – 2017
American economist whose Columbia doctoral dissertation, published in 1951 as Social Choice and Individual Values, proved that no method of aggregating ranked preferences can satisfy four elementary conditions at once. He went on to co-author the Arrow–Debreu proof of the existence of general equilibrium and to found modern health economics and the economics of information. He shared the 1972 Nobel Memorial Prize with John Hicks and, at 51, remains the youngest economics laureate.