A Celebration of John F. Nash Jr.

NASH, John F. and Harold W. Kuhn [Louis Nirenberg and Peter Sarnak].

$1,500.00

Item Number: 144405

Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1996.

First edition of this collection of Nash’s writings. Octavo, original blue cloth. Presentation copy, inscribed by the mathematician on the title page, “To John Rogay Best wishes Louis Nirenberg.” In near fine condition. Edited by Harold W. Kuhn, Louis Nirenberg and Peter Sarnak. Managing editor Morris Weisfeld. Louis Nirenberg was considered one of the most outstanding mathematicians of the 20th century.

This collection celebrates the pathbreaking work in game theory and mathematics of John F. Nash Jr., winner of the 1994 Nobel Prize in Economics. Nash’s analysis of equilibria in the theory of non-cooperative games has had a major impact on modern economic theory. This book, also published as volume 81 of the Duke Mathematical Journal, includes an important, but previously unpublished paper by Nash; the proceedings of the Nobel seminar held in Stockholm on December 8, 1994 in his honor; and papers by distinguished mathematicians and economists written in response to and in honor of Nash’s pioneering contributions to those fields. In 1950, when he was 22 years old, Nash presented his key idea—the Nash equilibrium—in the Ph.D. thesis he submitted to the Mathematics Department at Princeton University. In that paper, he defined a new concept of equilibrium and used methods from topology to prove the existence of an equilibrium point for n-person, finite, non-cooperative games, that its, for games in which the number of possible strategies are limited, no communication is allowed between the players, and n represents the number of players. The Nash equilibrium point is reached when none of the players can improve their position by changing strategies. By taking into account situations involving more than two players, specifically the general n-player game, Nash built significantly on the previous work of John Von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern.