39 - Stockholm 1994

Summary

In Fall 1994, mathematician John F. Nash received a phone call that he had won a Nobel prize, together with economists John C. Harsanyi and Reinhard Selten. The next day the story filled the newspapers. The New York Times had a headline “Game theory captures a Nobel”. Mathematical journals reported the news weeks or months later.

Hold on a minute! There is no Nobel prize in mathematics! In the early twentieth century Alfred Nobel established prizes only in physics, chemistry, medicine, literature, and peace. Nash worked in none of these disciplines. His award was not one of the original Nobel prizes but was rather the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, which was initiated in 1968 and is sponsored by the Central National Bank of Sweden. Like the original Nobel prizes, it is awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. It is often through this prize that mathematicians hit the front pages of the newspapers and become famous.

Nowadays the academic areas closest to mathematics are probably physics, computer science, and economics. When Greek culture dominated the western world, philosophy was close to mathematics, but the two have separated since then. Astronomy and mathematics were closely related in ancient times, but the close relationship between physics and mathematics was established and strengthened in the 17th century through the development of calculus.