Toward a History of Game Theory [Reviews]

Abstract

This collection of eleven essays examines the development of game theory from its inception in the 1920s to the 1950s and offers examples of games and solutions from the probabilists of the early 1700s. Four general topics are covered, and some chapters deal with more than one. The first concerns the work ofJohn von Neumann and Emile Borel in the 1920s on the minimax theorem, a theoretical result on equilibrium behavior in two-person, zero-sum games. Von Neumann was the first to prove this theorem, in a paper published in 1928. However his proof followed on the heels of notes by Borel establishing the result for three-strategy and five-strategy games. The ensuing debate as to which of these two mathematical giants had the rightful claim as "the inventor" of game theory was to turn nasty.