A Beautiful Math: John Nash, Game Theory, and the Modern Quest for a Code of Nature

A Beautiful Math: John Nash, Game Theory, and the Modern Quest for a Code of Nature
by Tom Siegfried

A Beautiful Math: John Nash, Game Theory, and the Modern Quest for a Code of Nature
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Book Summary Information

Author: Tom Siegfried
Edition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2006-09-22
ISBN: 0309101921
Number of pages: 272
Publisher: Joseph Henry Press

Book Reviews of A Beautiful Math: John Nash, Game Theory, and the Modern Quest for a Code of Nature

Book Review: A Beautiful Math is a Beautiful Book
Summary: 4 Stars

This is one of the nicest popular science reads I have experienced for a long time. The author has the ability to explain science and math in a very clear manner. The book does not only deal with Nash's math, but with all the math and science surrounding game theory. It is an exciting field, and the author is able to explain the limits of the theory and the hopes to understand human nature, and expressing it in mathematical terms.

If you are interested in gaining understanding of what game theory is about and current developments and thought in this field, in layman's language, I recommend that you get yourself a copy and read this book.

Summary of A Beautiful Math: John Nash, Game Theory, and the Modern Quest for a Code of Nature

Millions have seen the movie and thousands have read the book but few have fully appreciated the mathematics invented by John Nash's beautiful mind. Today Nash's beautiful math has become a universal language for research in the social sciences and has infiltrated the realms of evolutionary biology, neuroscience, and even quantum physics.

John Nash won the 1994 Nobel Prize in economics for pioneering research published in the 1950s on a new branch of mathematics known as game theory. At the time of Nash's early work, game theory was briefly popular among some mathematicians and Cold War analysts. But it remained relatively obscure until the 1970s, when evolutionary biologists began to find it useful. In the 1980s economists began to embrace game theory. Since then game theory math has found an ever expanding repertoire of applications among a wide range of scientific disciplines.

Today neuroscientists peer into game players' brains, anthropologists play games with people from primitive cultures, biologists use games to explain the evolution of human language, and mathematicians exploit games to better understand social networks.

A common thread connecting much of this research is its relevance to the ancient quest for a science of human social behavior, or "a Code of Nature," in the spirit of the fictional science of psychohistory described in the famous Foundation novels by the late Isaac Asimov. In A Beautiful Math, acclaimed science writer Tom Siegfried describes how game theory links the life sciences, social sciences and physical sciences in a way that may bring Asimov's dream closer to reality.

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