Leonid "Leo" Hurwicz was a Polish-American economist and mathematician. He originated incentive compatibility and mechanism design, which show how desired outcomes are achieved in economics, social science and political science. He was among the first economists to recognize the value of game theory and was a pioneer in its application. Leonid Hurwicz was born on August 21, 1917 in Moscow,  Russia, to a family of Polish Jews a few months before the October Revolution. Hurwicz received the National Medal of Science in 1990 in Behavioral and Social Science, presented to him by President of the United States George H. W. Bush, "for his pioneering work on the theory of modern decentralized allocation mechanisms".