INTERVIEW WITH ROBERT AUMANN
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supposed to give a two-hour lecture. The lectures were from 10 to 11, then a
half-hour break, and then 11:30 to 12:30. I rose to begin my presentation at 10
in the morning, and it wasn’t more than one minute before somebody interjected
with a question or remark. Somebody else answered, and pandemonium broke
loose. This lasted a full hour, from 10 to 11. After a few minutes I sat down and let
the people argue with each other, though this was supposed to be my presentation.
Then came the break. By 11:30 people had exhausted themselves, and I gave my
presentation between 11:30 and 12:30. This was typical, though perhaps a little
unusual in its intensity.
H: That was typical, exactly. There was no such thing as a twenty-minute grace
period. There was no grace whatsoever. On the other hand, the discussions were
really to the point. People were trying to understand. It was really useful. It clarified
things. If you take those twenty years, probably a significant part of the work in
economic theory in those years can be directly connected to the Stanford summer
seminar. It originated there. It was discussed there. It was developed there in many
different directions. There was nothing happening in economic theory that didn’t
go through Stanford, or was at least presented there.
A: We should move on perhaps to CORE, the Center for Operations Research
and Econometrics at the Catholic University of Louvain, an ancient university,
about seven or eight hundred years old. CORE was established chiefly through the
initiative of Jacques Dr`eze. I was there three or four times for periods of several
months, and also for many shorter visits. This, too, is a remarkable research
institution. Unlike the IMSSS, it is really most active during the academic year.
It is a great center for work in economic theory and also in game theory. The
person I worked with most closely throughout the years—and with whom I wrote
several joint papers—is Jacques Dr`eze. Another person at CORE who has had a
tremendous influence on game theory, by himself and with his students, is Jean-
Franc¸ois Mertens. Mertens has done some of the deepest work in the discipline,
some of it in collaboration with Israelis like my students Kohlberg, Neyman, and
Zamir; he established a Belgian school of mathematical game theory that is marked
by its beauty, depth, and sophistication.
Another institution with which I have been associated in the last ten or fifteen
years is the Center for Game Theory at Stony Brook. The focus of this center
is the summer program, which lasts two or three weeks, and consists of a large
week-long international conference that covers all of game theory, and specialized
workshops in various special areas—mostly quite applied, but sometimes also in
special theoretical areas. The workshops are for smaller groups of people, and
each one is three days, four days, two days, whatever. This program, which is
extremely successful and has had a very important effect on game theory, has been
run by Yair Tauman ever since its inception in ’91. In the past I also spent several
periods of several months each during the academic year teaching game theory or
doing research in game theory there with a small group of top researchers and a
small group of graduate students; that’s another institution with which I’ve been
associated.
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SERGIU HART
I should also mention Yale, where I spent the ’64–’65 academic year on sabbati-
cal. This was after publication of the work with Frank Anscombe, “A Definition of
Subjective Probability” [14]; Frank was the chairman of the statistics department
at Yale. At that time I was also associated with the Cowles Foundation; Herb
Scarf and Martin Shubik were there. A very unique experience was the personal
friendship that I struck up with Jimmy Savage during that year. I don’t know
how many people know this, but he was almost totally blind. Almost—not quite.
He could read with great difficulty, and tremendous enlargement. Looking at
his work there is no hint of this. I again spent about six weeks at Yale in the
late eighties at the Cowles Foundation, giving a series of lectures on interactive
epistemology.
One more place that influenced me was Berkeley, where I spent the summer
of ’64 and the spring of ’72. There the main contact was Gerard Debreu, who
was a remarkable personality. Other people there were John Harsanyi and Roy
Radner. In addition to his greatness as a scientist, Gerard was also well known as
a gourmet. His wife Franc¸oise was a terrific cook. Once in a while they would
invite us to dinner; Franc¸oise would go out of her way to prepare something
kosher. Occasionally we would invite them. It was his practice at a meal to
praise at most one dish. Sometimes he praised nothing; sometimes, one dish. That
totally transformed a compliment from Gerard from something trivial to something
sublime. Nowadays, I myself cook and give dinners; when a guest leaves saying
everything was wonderful, it means nothing. Though I allow myself to be kidded,
it really means nothing. But when a guest leaves and says, the soup was the most
delicious soup I ever had, that says something. He doesn’t talk about the meat and
not about the fish and not about the salad and not about the dessert, just the soup.
Or somebody else says, this was a wonderful trout mousse. One dish gets praised.
Then you know it’s meaningful.
I also spent a month at NYU, in February of 1997. It was interesting. But for
me, the attractions of New York City overwhelmed the academic activity. Perhaps
Esther and I took the city a little too seriously. This was a very beautiful time for
us, but what surrounds NYU was more important to us than the academic activity.
H: Maybe it’s a good point to ask you, in retrospect, who are the people who
have most influenced your life?
A: First of all my family: parents, brother, wife, children, grandchildren. My
great-grandchild has not yet had a specific important influence on me; he is all of
one and a half. But that will come also. My students have influenced me greatly.
You have influenced me. All my teachers. Beyond that, to pick out one person
in the family, just one: my mother, who was an extraordinary person. She got a
bachelor’s degree in England in 1914, at a time when that was very unusual for
women. She was a medal-winning long-distance swimmer, sang Shubert lieder
while accompanying herself on the piano, introduced us children to nature, music,
reading. We would walk the streets and she would teach us the names of the trees.
At night we looked at the sky and she taught us the names of the constellations.