Raphael Robb

University of Pennsylvania Professor

Raphael Robb got his BA at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel and immigrated to the United States in 1970. In 1981 he got his PhD in economics from UCLA. Three years later he joined the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania. Five years after that, he married Ellen Gregory. In 2004 Robb was granted tenure.

He was known for his contributions to evolutionary game theory—which, as we know you know, refers to the application of game theory to evolving populations of biological life-forms. In classical game theory, rational actors (i.e., human beings) make rational decisions within a context of rules and desirable goals (i.e., games). Applying a version of these principles (minus the “rational actors” part) to evolution answered a lot of questions, such as why individuals in animal populations would demonstrate “altruism,” when everyone knew—supposedly—that evolution required each individual to maximize the probability of his or her own survival.

But following rules to attain certain goals can sometimes be harder than it looks, and while it’s one thing to theorize about rational behavior, it can be another to adhere to it. On December 22, 2006, Robb and his wife argued—about their impending divorce and about the disposition of their house in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania. Then, as she was wrapping Christmas presents, Robb bludgeoned her to death—either with a chin-up bar or a crowbar, depending on whom you believe. In any case, the police mistook the gruesomeness of her injuries for the results of a shotgun blast.

Robb claimed the murder was the result of a burglary,* but nonetheless was arrested in January 2007 and pleaded guilty to a charge of voluntary manslaughter that November. The prosecutor was Bruce L. Castor, Jr., who commented, not entirely gracefully, “Professor Robb may be smarter than us, but he still is an amateur killer, and we are professional catchers of killers.”

Robb was sentenced a year later, to five to ten years. He was granted parole in January 2013, but the ruling triggered a national uproar. After the testimony of the Gregory family and others, the board reversed its decision. The following year, the couple’s daughter filed suit against her father for his appreciable assets. She won a judgment of $124.4 million, which economists refer to as “a fuck-ton” of money.^*

All of this leads one to wonder: if Ivy League faculty members don’t know better than to fly into an insane rage and murder their spouses, how can they expect students to behave any better?