The work of John F. Nash Jr. in game theory. Nobel seminar, 8 December 1994 (Q1913569)

In December 1994 a Nobel seminar was held at the occasion that two economists John Harsany and Reinhold Selten together with the mathematician John F. Nash were awarded with the Nobel Price in Economics. In 1928 John von Neumann had laid the foundation to the theory of games and in 1944, together with Oskar Morgenstern, they applied this theory to economics. In September 1948 John Nash, twenty years old, came to Princeton and in the short time of fourteen months of graduate study he developed the notion and properties of noncooperative finite \(n\)-persons games, which are very interesting in themselves and opened new problems that lie beyond the zero-sums two person case, the Nash equilibrium, the mixed equilibrium as a mass action phenomenon, and he raised the question: what would be a ``rational'' prediction to the behavior to be expected of rational playing the game in question? J. Maynard Smith and G. R. Price (1973) introduced the concept of evolutionary stable strategy (ESS) in genetics, in the beginning they were not aware of the relation between the concept of ESS and of Nash equilibrium. Game theory became one of the central tools for understanding the evolutionary logic of animal and plant interaction. Initially the main financial support for research came from military agencies in the USA, and the major applications were to tactical problems of defence from missiles, Colonel Blotto assignment problems, fighter-fighter duels etc. Later the emphasis shifted to deterrence and cold war strategy with contributions by political sciences. 55 references.