Selten, Reinhard (Reinhard Justus Reginald Selten), 1930–2016, German mathematician and economist, b. Breslau, Germany (now Wrocław, Poland), Ph.D. Johann-Wolfgang-Goethe-Univ., Frankfurt, 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; he was professor emeritus there from 1996. 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 also made contributions to experimental economics and the theory of bounded rationality.
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