31. August 2016

Mourning economist Professor Reinhard Selten University of Bonn commemorates Nobel laureate Professor Reinhard Selten

University of Bonn commemorates the Nobel laureate who died at 85

The University of Bonn mourns the loss of Prof. Dr. Reinhard Selten. Who died at the age of 85 on 23 August 2016 in Poznan (Poland). In 1994, the economist received the Nobel Prize in economics – as the first and only German so far. "Reinhard Selten was one of the most important scientists in Germany with an international reputation", says rector Prof. Dr. Michael Hoch. "His loss has moved us very much. The University of Bonn will always honour the memory of this outstanding person."

Prof. Dr. Reinhard Selten.
Prof. Dr. Reinhard Selten. - © Foto: Volker Lannert/Uni Bonn © Photo: Volker Lannert/Uni Bonn
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Until recently Reinhard Selten was active in research. Since 2006 he headed the project "Rationality in the light of experimental economics”, a project within the Humanities Long-Term Research Program of the Union of German Academies of Sciences and Humanities. Companions describe Reinhard Selten as a "scientist to the core" and a warm and popular person.

His contributions to the so-called game theory eventually led him to the Nobel Prize. Together with Wolfgang Paul (Nobel Prize in Physics in 1989) Reinhard Selten is one of two Nobel laureates who emerged from the University of Bonn’s faculty in the past three decades. With the establishment of the Laboratory of Experimental Economics Prof. Selten has greatly contributed to the international visibility of Bonn as a location of economic research. For his merits he was appointed Honorary Senator of the University of Bonn in 2007.

Reinhard Selten was born on 5 October 1930 in Wroclaw. He studied mathematics in Frankfurt/Main, where he received his doctorate in 1961. After a visiting professorship at Berkeley, he completed his “Habilitation” in Economics in 1968 at Frankfurt. After professorships at the Free University Berlin and the University of Bielefeld in 1984 he took over a professorship at the University of Bonn.

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