Jewish parents:-

Herbert Alexander Simon was born in USA on June 15, 1916. His father, Arthur Simon (1881–1948), was an electrical engineer who had come to the United States from Germany in 1903 and his mother, Edna Marguerite Merkel, was an accomplished pianist whose ancestors had come from Czech Republic.

Education & Social science Development:-

Herbert was educated as a child in the public school system, he was exposed to the idea that human behavior could be studied scientifically at a relatively young age, he discovered the social sciences, and among his earliest influences he focused in studying the social sciences and mathematics His most important mentor at the University was Henry Schultz who was an econometrician and mathematical economist. After enrolling in a course on "Measuring Municipal Governments," Simon was invited to be a research assistant for Clarence Ridley, with whom he coauthored the book Measuring Municipal Activities in 1948.
Eventually his studies led him to the field of organizational decision-making, which would become the subject of his doctoral dissertation in (1943). He joined the faculty of Illinois Institute of Technology, where he was a professor of political science from 1942 to 1949, He thus began a more in-depth study of economics in the area of institutionalism, Marschak brought Simon in to assist in the study he was currently undertaking with Sam Schurr of the “prospective economic effects of atomic energy”. In 1949, Simon became a professor of administrations and chairman of the Department of Industrial Management at Carnegie Tech (later to become Carnegie Mellon University). He continued to teach in various departments at Carnegie Mellon, including psychology and computer science, until his death in 2001. From 1950 to 1955, Simon discovered and proved the Hawkins-Simon theorem on the “conditions for the existence of positive solution vectors for input-output matrices." He also developed theorems on near-decomposability and aggregation. Having begun to apply these theorems to organizations, Simon determined around 1954 that the best way to study problem-solving was to simulate it with computer programs, which led to his interest in computer simulation of human cognition. End 1950s he was among the first members of the Society for General Systems Research. *[1]

Herbert simon and Studying decision-making. "My career was settled at least as much by drift as by choice. An undergraduate field study for a term paper developed an interest in decision-making in organizations. On graduation in 1936, the term paper led to a research assistantship with Clarence E. Ridley in the field of municipal administration, carrying out investigations that would now be classified as operations research. The research assistantship led to the directorship, from 1939 to 1942, of a research group at the University of California, Berkeley, engaged in the same kinds of studies. By arrangement with the University of Chicago, I took my doctoral exams by mail and moonlighted a dissertation on administrative decision-making during my three years at Berkeley." * [2] Herebert simon.

The centerpiece of his first book is the behavioral and cognitive processes of making rational human choices, that is, decisions. An operational administrative decision should be correct and efficient, and it must be practical to implement with a set of coordinated means. Simons 3 stages in Rational Decision Making: Intelligence, Design, Choice (IDC) Any decision involves a choice selected from a number of alternatives, directed toward an organizational goal or sub goal. Realistic options will have real consequences consisting of personnel actions or non-actions modified by environmental facts and values. In practice, some of the alternatives may be conscious or unconscious; some of the consequences may be unintended as well as intended; and some of the means and ends may be imperfectly differentiated, incompletely related, or poorly detailed.
The task of rational decision making is to select the alternative that results in the more preferred set of all the possible consequences. This task can be divided into three required steps:
1. the identification and listing of all the alternatives;
2. the determination of all the consequences resulting from each of the alternatives; and
3. the comparison of the accuracy and efficiency of each of these sets of consequences. The question here is: given the inevitable limits on rational decision making, what other techniques or behavioral processes can a person or organization bring to bear to achieve approximately the best result? Simon writes:
“The human being striving for rationality and restricted within the limits of his knowledge has developed some working procedures that partially overcome these difficulties. These procedures consist in assuming that he can isolate from the rest of the world a closed system containing a limited number of variables and a limited range of consequences.” [3]
Administrative Behavior, as a text, addresses a wide range of human behaviors, cognitive abilities, management techniques, personnel policies, training goals and procedures, specialized roles, criteria for evaluation of accuracy and efficiency, and all of the ramifications of communication processes. Simon is particularly interested in how these factors directly and indirectly influence the making of decisions. Decisions can be complex admixtures of facts and values. Information about facts, especially empirically proven facts or facts derived from specialized experience, are more easily transmitted in the exercise of authority than are the expressions of values. Simon is primarily interested in seeking identification of the individual employee with the organizational goals and values. he states that “a person identifies himself with a group when, in making a decision, he evaluates the several alternatives of choice in terms of their consequences for the specified group”, A person may identify himself with any number of social, geographic, economic, racial, religious, familial, educational, gender, political, and sports groups. Indeed, the number and variety are unlimited. The fundamental problem for organizations is to recognize that personal and group identifications can either facilitate or obstruct correct decision making for the organization. A specific organization has to deliberately determine and specify in appropriate detail and clear language its own goals, objectives, means, ends, and values.
The correctness of decisions is measured by two major criteria:
1. adequacy of achieving the desired objective; and
2. the efficiency with which the result was obtained. Many members of the organization may focus on adequacy, but the overall administrative management must pay particular attention to the efficiency with which the desired result was obtained.
Simon's contributions to research in the area of decision-making have become increasingly mainstream in the business community thanks to the growth of management consulting.
Simone's contribution in developing human since didn't stop till the day he died in he also has a lot of contributions in artificial intelligence, sociology and economics, pedagogy

Most famous Prizes Simon's got was:
1-Turing Award 1975
2-Nobel Prize in Economics 1978
3-National Medal of Science 1986 Known for:
1-Logic Theory Machine
2-General Problem Solver
3-Bounded Rationality
References:-
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Simon
[2] http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economics/laureates/1978/simon-autobio.html
[3] http://www.lis.pitt.edu/~mbsclass/is2000/hall_of_fame/simon.htm