Berkeley - John C. Harsanyi, winner of the
1994 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences and a
longtime professor at the University of California,
Berkeley's Haas School of Business and its Department of
Economics, died of a heart attack at his home in
Berkeley on Wednesday, Aug. 9.
He was 80 and had been suffering from Alzheimer's
Disease.
Harsanyi was awarded the Nobel Prize for his work in
game theory, a mathematical theory of human behavior in
competitive situations that has become a dominant tool
for analyzing real-life conflicts in business,
management and international relations. He shared the
award from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences with
fellow game theorists Reinhard Selten of Rheinische
Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universitaet in Bonn, Germany, and
John Nash of Princeton University.
When Harsanyi, an immigrant from communist Hungary,
won the Nobel Prize, he expressed hope that game theory
would help public and private institutions make better
decisions. In the long run, he said, he hoped this would
lead to a higher standard of living and to more peaceful
and more cooperative political systems.
"Professor Harsanyi's life-long work probed the idea
of rationality in human affairs, and he was a scholar
who cared deeply about the human condition. We will miss
him at Berkeley, where his years of devoted teaching and
his ground-breaking research inspired us all," said
Chancellor Robert M. Berdahl.
Harsanyi began teaching at UC Berkeley in 1964 as a
visiting professor in the business school. He became a
full professor in 1965 and remained on the faculty of
the Haas School of Business until his retirement in
1990. Harsanyi accepted a joint appointment on the
economics faculty in 1966.
"John Harsanyi dedicated his life to employ the
science of economics and game theory for the betterment
of the human race," said Haas School Dean Laura Tyson.
"He was a brilliant thinker, a gracious man, and a
gentle soul, ever concerned with the well-being of
others. We will all miss him dearly."
"The passing of John Harsanyi is a great loss to the
economics profession and to his many friends and
colleagues on this campus," said John Quigley, UC
Berkeley professor of economics and former chair of the
department. "Harsanyi's work was instrumental in making
economic theory 'fit' the imperfect world in which we
live. His development of game theory showed how
differences in the information available to economic
actors affected market outcomes and economic welfare.
His seminal works form the basis for all modern analyses
of industrial organization, and they have real practical
implications in business and government policy.
"John was a gentle and shy man, but a bold and
powerful intellectual presence," added Quigley. "We will
miss his grace and charm."
Game theory uses mathematics to try to predict the
outcome of games, such as chess or poker, and is
increasingly being applied to political and economic
conflict situations, including labor negotiations, price
wars, international political conflicts, and even
federal auctions, such as bandwidth auctions.
Harsanyi's principal contributions to the field
addressed the prediction of outcomes in games or
situations in which the players lack complete
information about each other or the rules of the game.
In 1964, Harsanyi was asked to be one of 10 game
theorists to advise the United States Arms Control and
Disarmament Agency on its negotiations with the Soviet
Union. The team found that it could not advise the U.S.
negotiators effectively because neither side knew much
about the other - it was a game of incomplete
information.
Harsanyi subsequently developed a systematic
procedure to convert any incomplete-information game
into an equivalent complete-information game containing
random moves, thereby significantly expanding the
applicability of game theory to political and economic
conflicts. In the late 1960s, Harsanyi described this
theory in a three-part article, "Games with Incomplete
Information Played by Bayesian Players," which is now
the basis for all work on games with incomplete
information.
Harsanyi was born on May 29, 1920, in Budapest,
Hungary, as the son of a Catholic pharmacist of Jewish
descent and was educated at the University of Budapest.
His main interests were in mathematics and philosophy,
but because of the uncertain political situation and the
impending Nazi danger, Harsanyi opted to obtain a degree
in pharmacology so he could work in his father's
pharmacy.
In 1944, the Germans occupied Hungary, and Harsanyi,
being of Jewish descent, was drafted into a forced-labor
unit near Budapest. Shortly thereafter, the Nazis
started deporting these laborers to mines and
concentration camps. Harsanyi narrowly escaped
deportation and found refuge with three friends at a
Jesuit monastery in Budapest.
After the war, Harsanyi earned a PhD in philosophy at
the University in Budapest where he later taught as an
assistant professor of sociology and also met his future
wife, Anne. In 1948, a Stalinist regime seized power in
Hungary and became increasingly intolerant of Harsanyi's
liberal views. Eventually, he had to resign from the
university and return to work in his father's pharmacy.
Pressure on Harsanyi persisted and, in 1950, the
family decided it was too dangerous for him to remain in
Hungary. Harsanyi and his soon-to-be wife, Anne, escaped
across the border to Austria, and emigrated to
Australia, as the waiting list of the Hungarian
immigration-quota to the United States was full. The
couple were married on January 2, 1951, three days after
arriving in Sydney.
In Sydney, Harsanyi worked in factories during the
day while earning an MA in economics at the University
of Sydney at night. In 1954, he was appointed lecturer
in economics at the University of Queensland in
Brisbane.
Harsanyi soon realized he was too isolated in
Australia to be effective in his field. In 1956, he
enrolled in the PhD program in economics at Stanford
University, writing his dissertation on game theory
under the guidance of the future Nobel Laureate Kenneth
Arrow.
Before arriving at UC Berkeley in 1964, he taught
economics at the Australian National University in
Canberra from 1958 to 1961 and at Wayne State University
in Detroit from 1961 to 1963. At Berkeley, he continued
his path-breaking work in game theory and also made
important contributions to the fields of ethics, social
choice and welfare economics. Harsanyi was awarded seven
honorary doctorates by universities around the world.
Harsanyi is survived by his wife, Anne, of Berkeley,
and son, Tom, of Somerville, Mass.
When Harsanyi was interviewed in Budapest after being
awarded the Nobel Prize, he said his family and his work
were the most important things in his life. He took
frequent trips all over the world with his family.
A memorial service for the campus community will be
held at 4 p.m. on Thursday, Aug. 31, in the Great Hall
of UC Berkeley's Faculty Club.
Donations in John Harsanyi's memory may be sent to
the Alzheimer's Association of the Greater Bay Area,
2065 West El Camino Real, Mountain View, CA 94042.
###
NOTE: Harsanyi's major publications include:
Essays on Ethics, Social Behavior, and Scientific
Explanation. With forward by Kenneth J. Arrow.
Dordrecht, Holland: D. Reidel, 1976. xvi + 262 pp.
Rational Behavior and Bargaining Equilibrium in Games
and Social Situations. Cambridge, England: Cambridge
University Press, 1977. x + 314 pp.
Papers in Game Theory. Dordrecht, Holland: D. Reidel,
1982. xii + 258 pp.
A General Theory of Equilibrium Selection in Games
(joint work with Reinhard Selten). With Foreword by
Robert Aumann. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1988. xiv + 378
pp.
L'utilitarianismo (Utilitarianism). Italian
translation by Simona Morini. Milano, Italy: Il
Saggiatore, 1988. xxix + 169 pp.
Festschrift:
Rational Interaction: Essays in Honor
of John C. Harsanyi. Reinhard Selten, Editor.
Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 1982.
