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Steven J. Brams (born November 28, 1940, in Concord, New Hampshire) is an American game theorist and political scientist at the New York University Department of Politics. Brams is best known for using the techniques of game theory, public choice theory, and social choice theory to analyze voting systems and fair division. He is one of the independent discoverers of approval voting, as well as extensions of approval voting to multiple-winner elections to give proportional representation of different interests.Brams was a co-discoverer, with Alan Taylor, of the first envy-free cake-cutting solution for n people.
Previous to the Brams-Taylor procedure, the cake-cutting problem had been one of the most important open problems in contemporary mathematics. He is co-inventor with Taylor of the fair-division procedure, adjusted winner, which was patented by New York University in 1999 (# 5,983,205).Brams has applied game theory to a wide variety of strategic situations, from the Bible and theology to international relations to sports.