Reading Peter Albin and Duncan Foley's Barriers and Bounds to Rationality made me want to do research in complex adaptive systems. It also formed my decision to go to the New School for Social Research in New York for graduate school.
You can see the effects of Albin's work in the Society for Computational Economics, and the Santa Fe school. It should be rememebered that Albin was doing research into Cellular Automata (via the game of life) a decade before the complexity revolution took place, although is was predated by Thomas Schelling.
To get a sense of the depth of Albin's research program, read this, by Duncan Foley.
There will be an academic memorial to Prof. Albin on May, 20, 2008, at 4pm in the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, 899 10th Avenue, room 630.
A beautiful paper, showing Albin (and Foley) at their best, is
Albin, Peter S, and Duncan K. Foley ' Decentralized, dispersed exchange without an auctioneer: A simulation study'. Journal of
Economic Behavior and Organization 18(1) 27-51 link(restricted)