List of game theorists

This is a list of notable economists, mathematicians, political scientists, and computer scientists whose work has added substantially to the field of game theory.

• Derek Abbott – quantum game theory and Parrondo's games
• Susanne Albers – algorithmic game theory and algorithm analysis
• Kenneth Arrow – voting theory (Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 1972)
• Robert Aumann – equilibrium theory (Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2005)
• Robert Axelrod – repeated Prisoner's Dilemma
• Tamer Başar – dynamic game theory and application robust control of systems with uncertainty
• Cristina Bicchieri – epistemology of game theory
• Olga Bondareva – Bondareva–Shapley theorem
• Steven Brams – cake cutting, fair division, theory of moves
• Jennifer Tour Chayes – algorithmic game theory and auction algorithms
• John Horton Conway – combinatorial game theory
• William Hamilton – evolutionary biology
• John Harsanyi – equilibrium theory (Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 1994)
• Monika Henzinger – algorithmic game theory and information retrieval
• Naira Hovakimyan – differential games and adaptive control
• Peter L. Hurd – evolution of aggressive behavior
• Rufus Isaacs – differential games
• Ehud Kalai – Kalai-Smorodinski bargaining solution, rational learning, strategic complexity
• Anna Karlin – algorithmic game theory and online algorithms
• Michael Kearns – algorithmic game theory and computational social science
• Sarit Kraus – non-monotonic reasoning
• John Maynard Smith – evolutionary biology
• Oskar Morgenstern – social organization
• John Forbes Nash – Nash equilibrium (Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 1994)
• John von Neumann – Minimax theorem, expected utility, social organization, arms race
• Abraham Neyman – Stochastic games, Shapley value
• J. M. R. Parrondo – games with a reversal of fortune, such as Parrondo's games
• Charles E. M. Pearce – games applied to queuing theory
• George R. Price – theoretical and evolutionary biology
• Anatol Rapoport – Mathematical psychologist, early proponent of tit-for-tat in repeated Prisoner's Dilemma
• Julia Robinson – proved that fictitious play dynamics converges to the mixed strategy Nash equilibrium in two-player zero-sum games
• Alvin E. Roth – market design (Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences 2012)
• Ariel Rubinstein – bargaining theory, learning and language
• Thomas Jerome Schaefer – computational complexity of perfect-information games
• Suzanne Scotchmer – patent law incentive models
• Reinhard Selten – bounded rationality (Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 1994)
• Claude Shannon – studied cryptography and chess; sometimes called "the father of information theory"
• Lloyd Shapley – Shapley value and core concept in coalition games (Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences 2012)
• Eilon Solan – Stochastic games, stopping games
• Thomas Schelling – bargaining (Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2005) and models of segregation
• Myrna Wooders – coalition theory