David Gale

David Gale (December 13, 1921 – March 7, 2008) was an American mathematician and economist. He was a professor emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley, affiliated with the departments of mathematics, economics, and industrial engineering and operations research. He has contributed to the fields of mathematical economics, game theory, and convex analysis.

Gale earned his Ph.D. in Mathematics at Princeton University in 1949. He taught at Brown University from 1950 to 1965 and then joined the faculty at the University of California, Berkeley.

Gale lived in Berkeley, California, and Paris, France with his partner Sandra Gilbert, renowned feminist literary scholar and poet. He has three daughters and two grandsons.

Contribution

Gale's contributions to mathematical economics include an early proof of the existence of competitive equilibrium, his solution of the n-dimensional Ramsey problem, in the theory of optimal economic growth.

Gale and Stewart initiated the study of infinite games with perfect information. This work led to fundamental contributions to mathematical logic.

The Life of David Gale

The Life of David Gale is a 2003 American drama thriller film directed by Alan Parker (in his final film as a director) and written by Charles Randolph. The film is an international co-production, between the United States, Germany and the United Kingdom.

Kevin Spacey played the eponymous character, a college professor and longtime activist against capital punishment who is sentenced to death for killing a fellow capital punishment opponent. Kate Winslet and Laura Linney co-star.

Plot

David Gale is a prisoner on death row in Texas. With only a few days to his execution, his lawyer negotiates a half million-dollar fee to tell his story to Bitsey Bloom, a journalist from a major news magazine known for her ability to keep secrets and protect her sources. He tells her the story of how he ended up on death row, revealed to the movie audience through a series of lengthy flashbacks.

Gale is head of the philosophy department at the University of Texas and an active member of DeathWatch, a group campaigning against capital punishment. At a graduation party, he encounters Berlin, an attractive graduate student who had been expelled from the school. She corners and seduces the inebriated Gale, succeeding in getting him to have rough sex with her. She then falsely accuses Gale of rape. The next day, he loses a televised debate with the Governor of Texas when he is unable to point to an example of a demonstrably innocent man being executed during that governor's term. After losing the debate Gale is arrested and charged with rape. The rape charge against Gale is later dropped, however the damage has already been done, and his family, marriage, career and reputation are all destroyed.

David

David (/ˈdeɪvɪd/; Hebrew: דָּוִד, Modern David, Tiberian Dāwîḏ;ISO 259-3 Dawid; Arabic: داوُد‎ Dāwūd; Syriac: ܕܘܝܕ‎ Dawid; Ancient Greek: Δαυίδ; Latin: Davidus, David; Strong's: Daveed) was, according to the Books of Samuel, the second king of the United Kingdom of Israel, and according to the New Testament, an ancestor of Jesus. His life is conventionally dated to c. 1040 – 970 BCE, his reign over Judah c. 1010–970 BCE.

The Books of Samuel, 1 Kings, and 1 Chronicles are the only Old Testament sources of information on David, although the Tel Dan Stele (dated c. 850–835 BCE) contains the phrase בית דוד (bytdwd), read as "House of David", which many scholars confirm to be a likely plausible match to the existence in the mid-9th century BCE of a Judean royal dynasty called the House of David.

Depicted as a valorous warrior of great renown, and a poet and musician credited for composing much of the psalms contained in the Book of Psalms, King David is widely viewed as a righteous and effective king in battle and civil justice. He is described as a man after God's own heart in 1 Samuel 13:14 and Acts 13:22.

Tel Aviv

Tel Aviv-Yafo (Hebrew: תל אביב-יפו‎ pronounced [ˈtel ˈaviv ˈjafo], Arabic: تل أبيب يافا‎) or Tel Aviv (Hebrew: תל אביב‎ pronounced [ˈtel ˈaviv], Arabic: تل أبيب‎) is a city in Israel, and the second most populous city administered by that country's government after Jerusalem. Situated on the Mediterranean coastline in central-west Israel, Tel Aviv has a population of 426,138. The greater Tel Aviv Metropolitan Area, also known as Gush Dan, constitutes Israel's largest conurbation with 3,713,200 residents, 42% of the country's population. Tel Aviv is governed by the Tel Aviv-Yafo municipality, headed by Ron Huldai, and is home to many foreign embassies.

Tel Aviv was founded in 1909 by Jewish immigrants on the outskirts of the ancient port city of Jaffa (Hebrew: יפו‎ Yafo). Immigration by mostly Jewish refugees meant that the growth of Tel Aviv soon outpaced Jaffa's, which had a majority Arab population at the time. Tel Aviv and Jaffa were merged into a single municipality in 1950, two years after the establishment of the State of Israel. Tel Aviv's White City, designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2003, comprises the world's largest concentration of Bauhaus buildings.

Middle East

The Middle East (also called the Mid East) is a transcontinental region centered on Western Asia and Egypt. The corresponding adjective is Middle-Eastern and the derived noun is Middle-Easterner. Formerly, the Eurocentric synonym Near East (as opposed to Far East) was commonly used. Arabs, Azeris, Kurds, Persians, and Turks constitute the largest ethnic groups in the region by population, while Armenians, Assyrians, Circassians, Copts, Druze, Jews, Maronites, Somalis, and other ethnic and ethno-religious groups form significant minorities.

The History of the Middle East dates back to ancient times, with the (geo-political) importance of the region being recognized for millennia. Several major religions have their origins in the Middle East, including Judaism, Christianity, and Islam; the Baha'i faith, Mandaeism, Unitarian Druze, and numerous other belief systems were also established within the region. The Middle East generally has a hot, arid climate, with several major rivers providing irrigation to support agriculture in limited areas such as the Nile Delta in Egypt, the Tigris and Euphrates watersheds of Mesopotamia, and most of what is known as the Fertile Crescent. Most of the countries that border the Persian Gulf have vast reserves of crude oil, with the dictatorships of the Arabian Peninsula in particular benefiting from petroleum exports. In modern times the Middle East remains a strategically, economically, politically, culturally and religiously sensitive region.