John F. Nash Jr. was 86.He invented a game, known as Nash, that became an obsession in the Fine Hall common room... [M]ost real world interactions are... complicated, where players� interests are not directly opposed, and there are opportunities for mutual gain. Dr. Nash�s solution, contained in a 27-page doctoral thesis he wrote when he was 21, provided a way of analyzing how each player could maximize his benefits, assuming that the other players would also act to maximize their self-interest.
This deceptively simple extension of game theory paved the way for economic theory to be applied to a wide variety of other situations besides the marketplace.
ADDED: Nash and his wife were passengers in a taxi on the New Jersey Turnpike:
[T]he driver lost control while trying to pass another car and hit a guard rail and another vehicle.... The couple were ejected from the cab and pronounced dead at the scene.
The cab driver survived.
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