Reinhard Selten

German economist (1930-2016)

Reinhard Selten is remembered in business for work that changed what came after it.

The record lists Reinhard Selten as German economist (1930-2016).

Reinhard Selten was born at Wrocław in 1930. His recorded nationality is Germany. He was educated at Goethe University Frankfurt.

The twentieth century made work collective, expensive and political, with consequences that reached well beyond the people doing it.

The record gives his occupations as economist, mathematician and esperantist.

His affiliations include Freie Universität Berlin, University of Bonn and Technische Universität Berlin.

The work that carried his reputation furthest concerned work in bounded rationality and can be considered one of the founding fathers of experimental economics. Enterprises outlive their founders or they do not, and that is the whole test.

His recorded fields of work are economics, mathematics and esperanto.

The honours are a fair index of how the work was received - Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel (1994) and Order of Merit of North Rhine-Westphalia (1996).

Working from Germany shaped what was possible - the audiences within reach, the institutions that would have him, the language the work first appeared in.

Reinhard Selten died in 2016 at the age of 86. The work outlived the arguments around it.

Achievements

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