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