Several Milestones in the History of Game Theory

Although the history of a scientific discipline should be studied regardless of which year and anniversary it is, with an attention to the idea development, the interdependence of various topics and problems etc., a jubilee can represent a good opportunity to remind some important events that influenced the forthcoming development, or to find some new and unnoticed relations. Coincidentally, in the domain of game theory, the year 2004 is exceptionally rich in anniversaries; without an exaggeration, most key events in the history of game theory have some jubilee this year. Before we turn to some of the important historical events, let us remind the definition and properties of one of the fundamental models of a medium generality used for the investigation of real decision situations: a normal form game. Definition 1. n-player normal form game is defined as the (2n+ 1)-tuple