Robert Aumann

Robert Aumann (born 1930) is an Israeli-American mathematician and game theorist who shared the 2005 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. His 1963 paper with Francis Anscombe established the Anscombe-Aumann framework for subjective expected utility in finite settings. Aumann's deeper contributions to game theory include the concept of correlated equilibrium — a generalization of Nash equilibrium that allows players to coordinate through a shared signal rather than independent randomization. He also proved the agreement theorem: rational agents with common priors cannot agree to disagree about posterior probabilities. Aumann's work is characterized by a belief that game theory is not merely a branch of economics but a universal language for strategic interaction, applicable from biology to international relations.