John Harsanyi

After preliminary work by a number of other distinguished mathematicians and economists, game theory as a systematic theory started with von Neumann and Morgenstern's book, 'Theory of Games and Economic Behavior,' published in 1944.

My parents owned a pharmacy in Budapest, which gave us a comfortable living. As I was their only child, they wanted me to become a pharmacist. But my own preference would have been to study philosophy and mathematics.