Selten, Reinhard

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Reinhard Selten, 1930–, German mathematician and economist, b. Breslau, Germany (now Wrocław, Poland), Ph.D. Johann-Wolfgang-Goethe-Univ., Frankfurt, Germany, 1961. He taught at the Free Univ. of Berlin (1969–72) and the Univ. of Bielefeld (1972–84) before joining the faculty at the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Univ., Bonn. An expert in game theory (see games, theory of), he refined and extended John F. Nash's work on noncooperative games. He shared the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences with Nash and John Harsanyi in 1994 for their work on game theory, which enabled it to become an important tool in the analysis of economic issues. Selten has also made contributions to experimental economics and the theory of bounded rationality.