Aumman, Robert J.
AUMMAN, ROBERT J.
AUMMAN, ROBERT J. (Yisrael ; 1930– ), Israeli mathematician, Nobel Prize laureate in economics. Aumman was born in Frankfurt, Germany, and immigrated with his family to New York in 1938. He studied mathematics, and graduated from the City College of New York in 1950 and received his M.A. and Ph.D. in mathematics from mit in 1955. In 1956 he immigrated to Israel and joined the Institute of Mathematics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he taught until his retirement. After completing his Ph.D. he shifted his interest to practical science and began to study game theory, then a novel scientific discipline, at Princeton (1960–61). From 1966 until 1968 he was the chairman of the Institute of Mathematics and in 1968 became a professor. Aumman was the first to conduct a full-fledged formal analysis of so-called infinitely repeated games. His research identified exactly what outcomes can be maintained over time in long-run relations. He introduced measure theory into the analysis of economies with an infinite number of agents, where each agent has little influence on the end result. Aumman also applied game theory to political conflicts, such as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. During his long academic career, he wrote about 100 articles and six books and was a visiting professor a many universities. He received several prizes for his research: Harvey Prize in Science and Technology (1983), the Israel Prize in economics (1994), Lanchester Prize in Operations Research (1995), Erwin Plein Nemmers Prize in Economics (awarded by Northwestern University, 1988), and emet prize in economics (2002). In 2005 he received the Nobel Prize with Thomas C. Schelling for their contribution to conflict solution in fields such as commerce and war.
bibliography:
Y. Melaman, and T. Traubman, "Nobel Prize in Economics To Be Given to an Israeli, Prof. Yisrael Aumman of the Hebrew University," in: Haaretz (Oct. 11, 2005).
[Shaked Gilboa (2nd ed.)]