{"id":1727,"date":"2011-04-07T01:00:41","date_gmt":"2011-04-07T05:00:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/info-libraries.mit.edu\/150books\/?p=1727"},"modified":"2023-07-12T15:50:16","modified_gmt":"2023-07-12T15:50:16","slug":"1951","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/libraries.mit.edu\/150books\/2011\/04\/07\/1951\/","title":{"rendered":"Year 91 – 1951: \u201cNon-cooperative Games\u201d by John Nash, in: Annals of Mathematics 54 (2)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Published: Princeton, N.J., 1951\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Over the past 60 years, game theory has been one of the most influential theories in the social sciences, pervasive in economics, political science, business administration, and military strategy \u2013 the disciplines most consulted by the powers-that-be for \u201creal-world,\u201d high-stakes decisions. But just as there would be no semiconductors or (God forbid) laser pointers if not for the abstruse mathematics of quantum theory, game theory can be traced back to theoretical work by academic mathematicians. In a set of papers in the 1950s, mathematician John Forbes Nash set forth breakthrough ideas that helped transform game theory from an ivory tower abstraction into an indispensable analytical tool used by strategists from Wall Street to the Pentagon.<\/p>\n

The foundational game theory work of mathematician John von Neumann and economist Oskar Morgenstern, published in 1944, provided a framework for solutions to zero-sum games, where one player\u2019s win was the other\u2019s loss. Nash, in his dissertation research at Princeton (published in this and three other papers), extended game theory to n<\/em>-person games in which more than one party can gain, a better reflection of practical situations. Nash demonstrated that \u201ca finite non-cooperative game always has at least one equilibrium point\u201d or stable solution. This result came to be called the \u201cNash equilibrium,\u201d a situation where no one player can get a better payoff by changing strategies, so long as other players also keep their strategies. Using Nash\u2019s framework, predictions can be made about the outcomes of strategic interactions.<\/p>\n

Based on Nash\u2019s advances, game theory developed into one of the pre-eminent tools of economics in the second half of the 20th century. In recognition of his breakthrough work, Nash was joint recipient of the Nobel Prize for Economics in 1994 for “pioneering analysis of equilibria in the theory of non-cooperative games.\u201d<\/p>\n

If visions of Russell Crowe have danced in your head while you\u2019ve been reading this post, that\u2019s probably because you remember that Crowe played John Forbes Nash in the 2001 film A Beautiful Mind<\/em> (at least we hope that\u2019s why). Part of the movie takes place at MIT, portraying Nash\u2019s years as an instructor in mathematics at the Institute, where he worked from 1951 to 1959, until mental illness curtailed his mathematical career.<\/p>\n

Find it in the library<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Published: Princeton, N.J., 1951 Over the past 60 years, game theory has been one of the most influential theories in the social sciences, pervasive in economics, political science, business administration, and military strategy \u2013 the disciplines most consulted by the powers-that-be for \u201creal-world,\u201d high-stakes decisions. But just as there would be no semiconductors or (God forbid) laser pointers if not for the abstruse mathematics of quantum theory, game theory can be traced back to theoretical work by academic mathematicians. In a set of papers in the 1950s, mathematician John Forbes Nash set forth breakthrough ideas that helped transform game theory […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":false,"categories":[5,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1727","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-all-years","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/libraries.mit.edu\/150books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1727","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/libraries.mit.edu\/150books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/libraries.mit.edu\/150books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libraries.mit.edu\/150books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libraries.mit.edu\/150books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1727"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/libraries.mit.edu\/150books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1727\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4302,"href":"https:\/\/libraries.mit.edu\/150books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1727\/revisions\/4302"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/libraries.mit.edu\/150books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1727"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libraries.mit.edu\/150books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1727"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libraries.mit.edu\/150books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1727"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}