Lee Kuan Yew, who was awarded the 1994 Ig Nobel Prize for psychology, has died, say numerous press reports.
His Ig Nobel citation said that the prize honored: “Lee Kuan Yew, former Prime Minister of Singapore, practitioner of the psychology of negative reinforcement, for his thirty-year study of the effects of punishing three million citizens of Singapore whenever they spat, chewed gum, or fed pigeons.”
Reuters reports about his death:
Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore’s first prime minister and architect of the tiny city-state’s rapid rise from British military outpost to global trade and financial center, died on Monday aged 91….
Lee, a British-educated lawyer, is widely credited with building Singapore into one of the world’s wealthiest nations on a per capita basis with a strong, pervasive role for the state and little patience for dissent…. He advocated free-wheeling market capitalism while keeping tight control over social behavior, from banning chewing gum to caning those caught painting graffiti on public property.