The Nobel Prize Internet Archive: An Autobiography of John Forbes Nash, Jr.
The Boston Globe: Economists Share Nobel Trio Pioneered Use Of Game Theory In The Field (10/12/94)
John Forbes Nash, Jr. was born in 1928 and received the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1994, along with John C. Harsanyi and Reinhard Selton for "their pioneering analysis of equilibria in the theory of non-cooperative games."
At the youthful age of twenty, Nash began his Ph.D. at Princeton University. Along with having the mind of a mathematical genius, Nash had to contend with Paranoid Schizophrenia for over twenty years. He was finally freed from this painful mental disorder in the mid-1980's and thus able to make full use of his incredible abilities.
Though Princeton mathematician, John von Neumann (known as Johnny by all) is known as the father of Game Theory, Nash took it to a level that made it viable in the study of Economics...what is known as "Nash Equilibrium".
According to Dixit and Nalebuff in "The Fortune Encyclopedia of Economics":
"...The are two distinct types of strategic interdependence: sequential and simultaneous. In the former the players move in sequence, each aware of the others' previous actions. In the latter the players act at the same time, each ignorant of the others' actions....In contrast to the linear chain of reasoning for sequential games, a game with simultaneous moves involves a logical circle...This logical circle is squared using a concept of equilibrium developed by...John Nash.
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