Rufus Isaacs (game theorist)

Rufus Philip Isaacs (June 11, 1914 – January 18, 1981) was a game theorist especially prominent in the 1950s and 1960s with his work on differential games.

Biography

Isaacs was born on 11 June 1914 in

Isaacs was a professor of Mathematical Sciences and Electrical Engineering at the Johns Hopkins University between 1967 and his retirement in 1977.

Selected work(s)

• Isaacs, Rufus. Differential Games, John Wiley and Sons, 1965.

The Isaacs Award

The executive board of the International Society of Dynamic Games decided in 2003 to establish a prize to recognize the "outstanding contribution to the theory and applications of dynamic games" of two scholars at each of its symposium, starting in 2004. The prize was named after Isaacs.^[2]

The recipients of this prize are:

• Yu-Chi Ho and George Leitmann (2004)
• Nikolay Krasovskii and Wendell Fleming (2006)
• Pierre Bernhard [fr] and Alain Haurie (2008)
• Tamer Başar and Geert Jan Olsder [nl] (2010)
• Steffen Jørgensen and Karl Sigmund (2012)
• Eitan Altman and Leon Petrosyan (2014)
• Martino Bardi and Ross Cressman (2016)
• Andrzej Nowak and Georges Zaccour (2018)

See also

• Pursuit–evasion games
• Princess and Monster game
• Search games

Notes

References

• Yu, P. L. "An appreciation of professor Rufus Isaacs" Journal of Optimization Theory and Applications, Springer Netherlands. Volume 27, Number 1 / January, 1979
• Breitner, M. H. "The Genesis of Differential Games in Light of Isaacs' Contributions". Journal of Optimization Theory and Applications, Springer Netherlands. Volume 124, Number 3 / March, 2005