# List of game theorists

This is a list of notable economists, mathematicians, political scientists, and computer scientists whose work has added substantially to the field of game theory.

## A

* Derek Abbott – quantum game theory and Parrondo's games
* Susanne Albers – algorithmic game theory and algorithm analysis
* Kenneth Arrow – voting theory (Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1972)
* Robert Aumann – equilibrium theory (Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 2005)
* Robert Axelrod – repeated Prisoner's Dilemma

## B

* Tamer Başar – dynamic game theory and application robust control of systems with uncertainty
* Cristina Bicchieri – epistemology of game theory
* Olga Bondareva – Bondareva–Shapley theorem
* Steven Brams – cake cutting, fair division, theory of moves

## C

* Jennifer Tour Chayes – algorithmic game theory and auction algorithms
* John Horton Conway – combinatorial game theory
* Antoine Augustin Cournot – monopoly and oligopoly games

## F

* Drew Fudenberg – repeated games and reputation effects

## H

* William Hamilton – evolutionary biology
* John Harsanyi – equilibrium theory (Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1994)
* Monika Henzinger – algorithmic game theory and information retrieval
* John Hicks – general equilibrium theory (including Kaldor–Hicks efficiency)
* Naira Hovakimyan – differential games and adaptive control
* Peter L. Hurd – evolution of aggressive behavior

## I

* Rufus Isaacs – differential games

## K

* Ehud Kalai – Kalai–Smorodinsky bargaining solution, rational learning, strategic complexity
* Anna Karlin – algorithmic game theory and online algorithms
* Michael Kearns – algorithmic game theory and computational social science
* Sarit Kraus – non-monotonic reasoning

## M

* John Maynard Smith – evolutionary biology
* Oskar Morgenstern – social organization
* Roger Myerson – mechanism design (Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 2007)

## N

* John Forbes Nash – Nash equilibrium (Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1994)
* John von Neumann – Minimax theorem, expected utility, social organization, arms race
* Abraham Neyman – Stochastic games, Shapley value

## P

* J. M. R. Parrondo – games with a reversal of fortune, such as Parrondo's games
* Charles E. M. Pearce – games applied to queuing theory
* George R. Price – theoretical and evolutionary biology
* Anatol Rapoport – Mathematical psychologist, early proponent of tit-for-tat in repeated Prisoner's Dilemma

## R

* Julia Robinson – proved that fictitious play dynamics converges to the mixed strategy Nash equilibrium in two-player zero-sum games
* Alvin E. Roth – market design (Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences 2012)
* Ariel Rubinstein – bargaining theory, learning and language

## S

* Thomas Jerome Schaefer – computational complexity of perfect-information games
* Suzanne Scotchmer – patent law incentive models
* Reinhard Selten – bounded rationality (Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1994)
* Claude Shannon – studied cryptography and chess; sometimes called "the father of information theory"
* Lloyd Shapley – Shapley value and core concept in coalition games (Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences 2012)
* Eilon Solan – Stochastic games, stopping games
* Thomas Schelling – bargaining (Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 2005) and models of segregation

## T

* Éva Tardos – algorithmic game theory
* Stef Tijs – cooperative game theory (including the Tijs value)

## V

* William Vickrey – auction theory

## W

* Myrna Wooders – coalition theory