Appendix E: Biographies

E.1 John von Neumann

John von Neumann was born to an aristocratic family on December 28, 1903, in Budapest, Austria-Hungary, and died February 8, 1957, in Washington, DC, of brain cancer. von Neumann earned two doctorates at the same time, a PhD in mathematics from the University of Budapest and a PhD in chemistry from the University of Zurich. He joined the faculty of the prestigious University of Berlin in 1927. von Neumann made fundamental contributions to quantum physics, functional analysis, economics, computer science, numerical analysis, and many other fields. There was hardly any subject that came to his attention that he didn’t revolutionize. Some areas, especially in mathematics, he invented. At age 19, he applied abstract operator theory, much of which he developed, to the brand new field of quantum mechanics. He was an integral member of the Manhattan Project and made fundamental contributions to the development of the hydrogen bomb and the development of the Mutual Assured Destruction policy of the United States. In 1932, he was appointed one of the original and youngest permanent members of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, New Jersey (along with A. Einstein), and helped to make it the most prestigious research institute in the world.

The von Neumann minimax theorem was proved in 1928 and was a major milestone in the theory of games. von Neumann continued to think about games and wrote the classic Theory of Games and Economic Behavior (written with economist Oskar Morgenstern1) in 1944. It was a breakthrough in the development of economics using mathematics and in the mathematical theory of games. His contributions to pure mathematics fills volumes. The cleverness and ingenuity of his arguments amaze mathematicians to this day.

von Neumann was one of the most creative mathematicians of the twentieth century. In a century in which there were many geniuses and many breakthroughs, von Neumann contributed more than his fair share. He ranks among the greatest mathematicians of all time for his depth, breadth, and scope of contributions. In addition, and perhaps more importantly, von Neumann was famous for the parties he hosted throughout his lifetime and in the many places he lived. He was an aristocratic bon vivant who managed several careers even among the political sharks of the cold war era without amassing enemies. He was well liked by all of his colleagues and lived a contributory life.

If you want to read a very nice biography of John von Neumann read MacRae’s (1999) excellent book.

E.2 John Forbes Nash

John Forbes Nash, Jr., was born June 13, 1928, in Bluefield, West Virginia. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics (formally the 1994 Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences), which he shared with the mathematical economists and game theorists Reinhard Selten and John Harsanyi. This is the most prestigious prize in economics but certainly not the only prize won by Nash. In 1978, Nash was awarded the John von Neumann Theory Prize for his invention of noncooperative equilibria, now called Nash equilibria and in 1999 Nash was awarded the Leroy P. Steele Prize by the American Mathematical Society.

Nash continues to work on game theory, and his contributions to the theory of games has certainly been as profound as that of von Neumann and others. Like von Neumann, Nash is truly a pure mathematician with a very creative, penetrating, and inquisitive mind, with fundamental contributions to differential geometry, global analysis, and partial differential equations. Despite the power and depth of his thinking and mathematical ability, between 1945 and 1996, he published only 23 papers (most of which contain major and fundamental results). The primary reason for the unproductive period in his life is the illness that he suffered, and suffers to this day, described in his autobiography2 written for the Nobel award. John Nash’s life was dramatized in the movie A Beautiful Mind in which Russell Crowe played the lead, based on the book by Sylvia Nasar (1998).

Nash is currently a Senior Research Mathematician at Princeton.

For further information about Nash, read the book by Nasar (1998) and see the movie.

1 Born January 24, 1902, in Germany and died July 26, 1977, in Princeton, New Jersey. Morgenstern’s mother was the daughter of the German emperor Frederick III. He was a professor at the University of Vienna when he came to the United States on a Rockefeller Foundation fellowship. In 1938, while in the United States, he was dismissed from his post in Vienna by the Nazis and became a professor of economics at Princeton University where he remained until his death.

2 Les Prix Nobel. The Nobel Prizes 1994, edited by Tore Frängsmyr (Nobel Foundation), Stockholm, 1995. You can read it and the biographies of R. Selten and J. Harsanyi online at www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economics/laureates/1994/nash-autobio.html.