caption death_date death_place citizenship nationality name birth_date image article_title birth_name death_cause
dr robin farquharson 1970 1 april 1973 somers town , london british south african robin farquharson 3 october 1930 robin farquharson.jpg robin farquharson
 reginald robin farquharson injuries caused by fire
robin farquharson

reginald robin farquharson -lrb- 3 october 1930 -- 1 april 1973 -rrb- was an academic whose interest in mathematics and politics led him to work on game theory .
he wrote an influential analysis of voting systems in his doctoral thesis , later published as `` theory of voting '' .
farquharson diagnosed himself as suffering from bipolar disorder -lrb- manic depression -rrb- , and episodes of mania made it difficult for him to obtain a permanent university position and also resulted in him losing commercial employment .
in later years , he dropped out of mainstream society , and became a prominent counter-cultural figure in late-1960s london .
farquharson wrote an account of his unconventional life in his 1968 book , `` drop out ! ''
, in which he described a week of being homeless in london .
in 1973 he died from burns associated with an arson , for which two persons were convicted of unlawful killing .
