介绍:
“这个男人是个天才”
——R.J. Duffin为纳什写给哈佛大学的推荐信
约翰·福布斯·纳什二世（英语：John Forbes Nash Jr.，1928年6月13日－2015年5月23日），美国数学家，前麻省理工学院摩尔荣誉讲师，主要研究博弈论、微分几何学和偏微分方程。1994年，他和其他两位博弈论学家约翰·海萨尼和莱因哈德·泽尔腾共同获得了诺贝尔经济学奖。2015年，他与路易·尼伦伯格共同获得了阿贝尔奖。
1950年，纳什获得美国普林斯顿大学的博士学位，他在那篇仅仅28页的博士论文中提出了一个重要概念，也就是后来被称为“纳什均衡”的博弈理论。他的理论被运用在市场经济、计算、演化生物学、人工智能、会计、政策和军事理论。晚年为普林斯顿大学的资深研究数学家。
Transcript from an interview with Dr. John Nash at the 1st Meeting of Laureates in Economic Sciences in Lindau, Germany, September 1-4, 2004. Interviewer is freelance journalist Marika Griehsel.
Marika Griehsel：If you were to give advice to young students today, what fields should they look into if they are interested in economics?
John Nash: With regard to the specific sub-fields of economics, I don't know so well. I can observe the game theory is applied very much in economics. Generally, it would be wise to get into the mathematics as much as seems reasonable because the economists who use more mathematics are somehow more respected than those who use less. That's the trend.
I don't think exactly like a professional economist. I think about economics and economic ideas, but somewhat like an outsider. Of course von Neumann was not an economist but Morgenstern was, and they teamed together on that book. Otherwise there are a lot of trends in economics. What seems fashionable now and the general opinion might be quite different after 20 years or so. Somebody studying a career they should be prepared for changes. I think they should learn things that are good foundations but don't necessarily depend on a current fashion or what could be considered general opinion or popular opinion. You should maybe try to learn things that would be good for all time. Unquestionable scientific value.
Marika Griehsel: Are there any issues in the world today that you are concerned of? For example, if we look at the disparity between the first so called First World and Third World. If we look at the political situation and what comes with it, for example, the US budget deficit, and its reasons for that ... Are there any of those issues that concerns you as a scientist and that you give extra thought?
John Nash: You mentioned some different things here like the question of the First World, Third World and what happened to the Second World? The US budget, those are quite different topics.
Marika Griehsel: Certainly they are. There's a broad span.
John Nash: I think they require different doctors to deal with them.
Marika Griehsel: Is there anything that you are particularly concerned of or …?
John Nash: Well, these are popular themes, but you find something that people are talking about and you may find that there are differing opinions. There's the most widely held opinion, but there are maybe some other opinion that is more scientific or more subtle. It is easy to say that there are the rich and the poor and so something should be done. But in history there are always the rich and the poor. If the poor were not as poor we would still call them the poor. I mean whoever has less can be called the poor. You will always have the 10% that have less and the 10% that have the most. But maybe comparatively they're not so bad.
I was thinking about these things when I saw India for the first time. I think it was last year in January 2003, when driving through the countryside of India I could see areas where presumably the amount of recognised
income, personal income, would be very low. But this gave me the thought, comparatively one sort of peasant or level of Indian and another one might not feel so bad. These are not the beggars on the street, but people out in the country. If they had as much as someone else in that area, if they are not so poor compared to their neighbours, and if you look through history, humans have lived under different conditions, they had to live maybe very, very primitively a few thousand years ago, so much of this living of the modern humans is very, very recent. Man has existed for much longer than has this technology.
Marika Griehsel: I think from what you're saying it's really comparative how much you need and there is a certain idea maybe in the so called Western World that we need more than we actually do need. It's a certain greed which has kind of taken resources from so called Third World countries. Does it lead to wishes of further wealth which is maybe ...?
John Nash: The more in the richer countries ... if they wish to consume more, this is likely to provide some business for other parts of the world. They will have maybe some imports. I mean if countries like the USA and Sweden are to import more, then that is business for other parts of the world, and maybe some choice products. But what makes it hard for the other parts of the world if the countries again like USA or Sweden can manufacture all that they need in manufactured goods, and furthermore produce all they need agriculturally so they don't need to import anything and they have things to export.
Marika Griehsel: That's partly where we are today, isn't it?
John Nash: There is a political issue about these subsidies for agriculture that European countries, which could import agriculture products with subsidised local agriculture and maybe produce the products there, like Germany may be growing a lot of wheat which they make into brot, and it might be we wouldn't need to grow any wheat, they could import it from Russia or somewhere. And then that would provide business by trade.
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