- 2005 Nobel Prize in Economic
Intro
Robert Aumann is an Israeli-American mathematician, and a member of the United States National Academy of Sciences. He was awarded the 2005 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences jointly with Thomas Schelling "for his work on conflict and cooperation through game- theory analysis."
Education and Work Experience
1952, Ph.D. in Mathematics from the MIT;
1959-Present, joined the Mathematics faculty of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel 1971-1974, visiting professor at University of California, Berkeley, the U.S.
1975-1976, visiting professor at Stanford University, the U.S.
1977-1984, visiting professor at Université catholique de Louvain, Belgium Since 1989, visiting professor at Stony Brook University, the U.S.
Honors and Awards
1974, Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 1994, Israel Prize for economics
2005, Nobel Prize in Economic (share US$1.3 million prize with Thomas Schelling)
Major Academic Achievements
Aumann's greatest contribution was in the realm of repeated games, which are situations in which players encounter the same situation over and over again. Aumann was the first to define the concept of correlated equilibrium in game theory, which is a type of equilibrium in non-cooperative games that is more flexible than the classical Nash equilibrium. Furthermore, Aumann has introduced the first purely formal account of the notion of common knowledge in game theory. He collaborated with Lloyd Shapley on the Aumann-Shapley value. He is also known for his agreement theorem, in which he argues that under his given conditions, two Bayesian rationalists with common prior beliefs cannot agree to disagree.