Born: 13 June 1928, Bluefield, WV, USA
Affiliation at the time of the award:Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA
Prize motivation: "for their pioneering analysis of equilibria in the theory of non-cooperative games"
Field: Game theory
Contribution: Introduced the distinction between cooperative games, in which binding agreements can be made, and non-cooperative games, where binding agreements are not feasible. Developed an equilibrium concept for non-cooperative games that now is called Nash equilibrium
My beginning as a legally recognized individual occurred on June 13, 1928 in Bluefield, West Virginia, in the Bluefield Sanitarium, a hospital that no longer exists. Of course I can't consciously remember anything from the first two or three years of my life after birth. (And, also, one suspects, psychologically, that the earliest memories have become "memories of memories" and are comparable to traditional folk tales passed on by tellers and listeners from generation to generation.) But facts are available when direct memory fails for many circumstances. My father, for whom I was named, was an electrical engineer and had come to Bluefield to work for the electrical utility company there which was and is the Appalachian Electric Power Company. He was a veteran of WW1 and had served in France as a lieutenant in the supply services and consequently had not been in actual front lines combat in the war. He was originally from Texas and had obtained his B.S. degree in electrical engineering from Texas Agricultural and Mechanical (Texas A. and M.). My mother, originally Margaret Virginia Martin, but called Virginia, was herself also born in Bluefield. She had studied at West Virginia University and was a school teacher before her marriage, teaching English and sometimes Latin. But my mother's later life was considerably affected by a partial loss of hearing resulting from a scarlet fever infection that came at the time when she was a student at WVU.
Read more at nobelprize.org
