Nepedia
Back to Discover
Fluent Reader
🔢

Robert Aumann

math Maturity 13-18 Next article →

Robert Aumann is a very important mathematician.

Flickr - Government Press Office (GPO) - Nobel Laureate Yisrael Aumann
Flickr - Government Press Office (GPO) - Nobel Laureate Yisrael Aumann

He was born in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, on June 8, 1930. His family moved to the United States in 1938. This move happened just two weeks before an event called Kristallnacht. Aumann went to the Rabbi Jacob Joseph School in New York City. He later studied at the City College of New York. He earned his B.S. degree in mathematics there in 1950. He then went to MIT for more studies. He earned an M.S. in 1952 and a Ph.D. in 1955. His doctoral work was about knot theory.

Robert is a master of a subject called game theory. This is math that looks at how people make choices. He focuses on something called repeated games. These are situations where people face the same choice many times. He also created a new idea called correlated equilibrium. This idea is more flexible than the older Nash equilibrium. He also worked on the Aumann–Shapley value with Lloyd Shapley. Another big idea of his is common knowledge. This helps explain how people know what others know. He even used math to solve a puzzle from the Talmud. This puzzle was about how to divide heritage among three wives.

His life has been full of hard work and big discoveries. In 1956, he joined the faculty at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He has also visited many other famous schools. These include Stanford University and the University of California, Berkeley. He has visited places like the Universite Catholique de Louvain too. He is a founding member of the Stony Brook Center for Game Theory. Aumann is also a member of the United States National Academy of Sciences. He has taught many students who became great mathematicians themselves. His work helps us see how people act in groups.

In 2005, Robert reached a huge milestone in his career. He won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. He shared this big prize with Thomas Schelling. They won it for their work on conflict and cooperation. This means they studied how people fight and how they work together. He also looked at a topic called Bible codes. He wanted to see if there were hidden messages in the text. He led a committee in 1996 to test these ideas. His tests did not find the codes. He believes that finding such codes is very unlikely.

Robert uses his math to think about the whole world. In his Nobel lecture, he spoke about "War and Peace." He thinks we can study war scientifically to help stop it. He also thinks math can help us understand peace. His ideas can show how certain threats might actually prevent war. He has also shared his views on the security of Israel. He believes that math can help leaders make better choices. His work shows that math is not just about numbers. It is about understanding how humans live and interact with each other.

495 words

Where will your curiosity go next?

Keep exploring at your chosen reading level.

🖼️ Images & Media (1)
File:Flickr - Government Press Office (GPO) - Nobel Laureate Yisrael Aumann.jpg
Flickr - Government Press Office (GPO) -...
More to explore

🔬 Go deeper

More advanced topics to explore

🪜 Step back

Simpler topics to build understanding

What is Nepedia?

A free, ad-free encyclopedia for children. Every article is written at five reading levels, so the same page works for a five-year-old and a fifteen-year-old — use the level switcher above to see this one change. No account needed to read.