Left: John von Neumann’s 1928 article Zur Theorie der Gesellschaftsspiele (“The Theory of Games”) from Mathematische Annalen 100: 295–320. Right: von Neumann with his later collaborator Oskar Morgenstern (1902–1977) in 1953.

The von Neumann Essays

John von Neumann’s Minimax Theorem

“As far as I can see, there could be no theory of games … without that theorem … I thought there was nothing worth publishing until the Minimax Theorem was proved” — John von Neumann

Hungarian polymath John von Neumann (1903–1957)’s legacy includes significant contributions to the foundations of mathematics and set theory, quantum mechanics…