Nash's Game-Changing Idea Marks 75 Years
Heidi Opdyke
- Associate Dean of Marketing and Communications, MCS
- Email opdyke@andrew.cmu.edu
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Seventy-five years ago, a young mathematician and 麻豆村 alumnus named John F. Nash Jr. changed the way we understand decision-making 鈥� and the ripple effects are still felt today in fields like economics, political science, computer science and artificial intelligence.
The Nash Equilibrium, published in his 1950 doctoral dissertation at Princeton University, showed how people make choices in competitive situations 鈥� from business negotiations to international diplomacy 鈥� when each person鈥檚 success depends on the actions of others.
Early years
When Nash was in elementary school, he was doing arithmetic with larger numbers than his classmates.
鈥淚 would have several digits, and they would have maybe two or three digits,鈥� Nash recalled. In high school he was reading 鈥淢en of Mathematics鈥� by E.T. Bell, and was proving Fermat鈥檚 little theorem.
While his mathematical ability was evident early on, Nash set foot on Carnegie Mellon鈥檚 campus 鈥� then the Carnegie Institute of Technology 鈥� as a chemical engineering major. He soon found that neither chemical engineering nor chemistry suited his interests. Noticing his natural talent in mathematics, faculty in the Department of Mathematical Sciences assured him that he could have a good career as a mathematician and encouraged him to switch his major.
Nash excelled as an undergraduate mathematics student. He published articles on number theory and topology in , a magazine produced by students in the College of Engineering and Science. And he participated in the William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition, winning an honorable mention in 1946 and placing among the top 10 in 1947.
A mathematical genius
Nash鈥檚 classmates recognized his talents. Raoul Bott, who earned his Ph.D. from Carnegie Tech in 1949, recalled taking Richard Duffin鈥檚 course on Hilbert spaces with Nash, who was an undergraduate at the time.
鈥淲e were reading von Neumann鈥檚 book on quantum mechanics, which developed Hilbert spaces at the same time,鈥� Bott said. 鈥淎nd it soon became clear that Nash was ahead of all of us in understanding the subtleties of infinite-dimensional phenomena.鈥�
Duffin had a long and influential career as a faculty member in the Department of Mathematical Sciences and knew Nash鈥檚 ability. In a letter recommending Nash for graduate studies at Princeton, Duffin didn鈥檛 mince words, 鈥淗e is a mathematical genius.鈥�
In addition to his mathematics courses, Nash also took an elective class at Carnegie Tech in international economics. That exposure to economic ideas and problems was the spark that eventually led to Nash鈥檚 interest in game theory.
Nash graduated with bachelor鈥檚 and master鈥檚 degrees in mathematics in 1948.
Nobel Prize and global recognition
After earning his doctorate at Princeton in 1950, Nash joined the mathematics faculty at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology beginning in 1951. He later returned to join the faculty at Princeton as a senior research mathematician.
In 1994, Nash won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his doctoral work on game theory.
The University of Oxford held a symposium in honor of the 75th anniversary of the Nash Equilibrium in July 2025. The event featured talks and discussions from researchers in a broad array of fields including Vincent Conitzer, professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon, who discussed .
Conitzer has courtesy appointments in the Departments of Machine Learning and Philosophy and the Tepper School of Business. He directs the Foundations of Cooperative AI Lab (FOCAL). He received his master鈥檚 and doctorate degrees from Carnegie Mellon鈥檚 School of Computer Science and serves as head of Technical AI Engagement at the Institute for Ethics in AI and Professor of Computer Science and Philosophy at the University of Oxford.
Conitzer said that is remarkable that the foundation laid by Nash is still so key to game theory and so fruitful for ongoing research.
鈥淚n my lab, we consider interactions between AI agents. That would have been hard to imagine 75 years ago, and it does add a number of new twists that don't apply to human interactions,鈥� Conitzer said. 鈥淏ut yet, the foundations of game theory are robust and flexible enough to adapt to this new setting and form a solid basis for our work.鈥�
Carnegie Mellon recognized Nash鈥檚 accomplishments with an honorary degree in economics in 1999.
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A lasting legacy
While John Nash is best known for the Nash Equilibrium, many mathematicians consider it a piece of his much broader legacy.
Later research in geometry and partial differential equations is widely regarded by mathematicians as his most important and deepest work.听
In 2015, Nash received the Abel Prize, mathematics鈥� highest honor, with Louis Nirenberg for 鈥渟triking and seminal contributions to the theory of nonlinear partial differential equations and its applications to geometric analysis.鈥�
鈥淭heir breakthroughs have developed into versatile and robust techniques that have become essential tools for the study of nonlinear partial differential equations,鈥� wrote the Abel committee. 鈥淭heir impact can be felt in all branches of the theory.鈥�
Days after receiving the award in Norway, Nash and his wife, Alicia, died in a car accident in New Jersey. He was 86.
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