John F. Nash is a renowned mathematician, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1994 for his innovative work on analysis of equilibria in the theory of non-cooperative games.
Personal, career and Academic profiles
John F. Nash was born on June 13, 1928 in Bluefield, West Virginia, U.S. John F. Nash was the son of John Nash Sr.
He was a prodigy, who attended classes at Bluefield College, while in high school. He studied Chemical Engineering from Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon University) in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He later studied Chemistry and then Mathematics from the same University. He achieved both his Bachelor's and Master's Degree in 1948 from the Carnegie Institute.
After completing his graduation, Nash took a summer job in White Oak, Maryland. There he was engaged in working on a Navy research project , which was being run by Clifford Truesdell and from White Oak he joined Princeton University, where he devoted himself on his equilibrium theory. In 1950, he was awarded a doctorate degree for his thesis on non-cooperative games.
Honors and awards
In 1994, John Forbes Nash was rewarded the Nobel Prize for Economic Sciences. He got this reward for Economics for his groundbreaking work on game theory which he produced in 1950 at the age of 21.He shared the Nobel Prize with the Hungarian American economist John C. Harsanyi and German mathematician Reinhard Selten.
In 1999, John F. Nash won the Leroy P Steele Prize.
In 2001, a film was made portraying Nash's long battle with schizophrenia. The name of the film was “A Beautiful Mind”.
Theory propounded and research works
The most famous theory propounded by Nash is Game theory, which is a branch of mathematics that studies rivalries among competitors with mixed interests. This is also know as the Nash solution or the Nash equilibrium. This theory establishes the dynamics of threat and action among competitors. Nash solution is primarily used to ascertain business strategies.
Famous articles and works of John F. Nash
1950: "Equilibrium Points in N-person Games", Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 36
1950: "The Bargaining Problem", Econometrica 18
1952:"Real algebraic manifolds", Annals of Mathematics 56
1952: Proc. Internat. Congr. Math.
1953: "Two-person Cooperative Games", Econometrica 21