Hayward Alker

He received his B.S. in mathematics from MIT, and both his M.A. and Ph.D. in political science from Yale University. ==Career==

Hayward Alker served as John A. McCone Professor of International Relations at USC from 1995 until his death in 2007. Previously, he was a senior professor of political science at MIT, and before that was a full professor at Yale by age 29. From 1992 to 1993, he was the president of the International Studies Association (ISA). Alker received appointments as a visiting professor at a number of institutions, including Brown University, University of Wales, Aberystwyth, and the University of Michigan. He was the first Olof Palme Professor at the University of Uppsala and Stockholm University in Sweden. He was awarded a 1996 fellowship to study chaos theory at the Santa Fe Institute. ==Research and influence==

His 1996 book Rediscoveries and Reformulations: Humanistic Methodologies for International Studies (Cambridge U, ) collected his essays that offer humanistic alternatives to the conventional scientific approaches within international studies. Alker was one of the 12 key contemporary thinkers covered in the 1997 book "The Future of International Relations," edited by Iver Neumann. His writings have influenced numerous scholars. His former students recall his generosity with time and his intellectual creativity. Rather than rewarding only the PhD students who followed his own research program, as some professors do, he stimulated and inspired a wide variety of budding intellects. Prof. Joshua Goldstein wrote: "He was consciously, purposefully multi-methodological and multi-theoretical. He always pushed his students to find other theoretical perspectives and to use multiple methodologies. That had a huge effect on my career." A memorial conference in his honor was held at the Watson Institute for International Studies, Brown University, 6–7 June 2008. A festschrift in his honor resulted in a book, Alker and IR: Global Studies in an Interconnected World (Routledge 2011, ), edited by Renée Marlin-Bennett. Another book, edited by Tahir Amin, is entitled World Orders in Central Asia: Essays in honor of Hayward R. Alker (Brown University, forthcoming). The Department of International Relations at Quaid-i-Azam University in Islamabad, Pakistan, inaugurated the Dr Hayward R. Alker Library in his honor in 2009, containing hundreds of books and papers from Alker's collection. The USC Center for International Studies has a Post-Doctoral Research Fellowship named in his honor. The ISA posthumously recognized him with its Susan Strange Award, which recognizes a person whose intellect most challenges conventional wisdom in the international studies community. Social scientists whom Alker taught include Robert Axelrod, Mitchel Wallerstein, Thomas Biersteker, Takashi Inoguchi, Thomas Homer-Dixon, Tahir Amin, Ijaz Gilani, Peter M. Haas, Renee Marlin-Bennett, Gavan Duffy, L.H.M. Ling, Dale D. Murphy, Laura Sjoberg, Joshua Goldstein, Roger Hurwitz, John C. Mallery, Loren King, Eileen de los Reyes, Neta Crawford, William D. Stanley, Sinan Birdal, Eric Blanchard, Paul T. Levin, and Yong Wook Lee. Other scholars he significantly influenced include Patrick Jackson and Andrei Tsygankov. ==Personal life==

Alker was born in New York City in 1937 and raised in Greenwich, CT. He attended Brunswick School, where he was the first student in the school's history to earn straight A's. He was married to J. Ann Tickner, also a professor of international relations at USC. They have three daughters. He sang with a leading Los Angeles County sacred choral group, Cantori Domino, with whom he toured Italy in summer 2007. Alker died on August 24, 2007, at the age of 69, after suffering a cerebral hemorrhage at his family's summer home in Block Island, R.I. ==Publications==