John Nash’s Super Short PhD Thesis: 26 Pages & Two Citations

When John Nash wrote “Non-Coop­er­a­tive Games,” his Ph.D. dis­ser­ta­tion at Prince­ton in 1950, the text of his the­sis (read it online) was brief. It ran only 26 pages. And more par­tic­u­lar­ly, it was light on cita­tions. Nash’s diss cit­ed two texts: John von Neu­mann and Oskar Mor­gen­stern’s The­o­ry of Games and Eco­nom­ic Behav­ior (1944), which essen­tial­ly cre­at­ed game the­o­ry and rev­o­lu­tion­ized the field of eco­nom­ics; the oth­er cit­ed text, “Equi­lib­ri­um Points in n‑Person Games,” was an arti­cle writ­ten by Nash him­self. And it laid the foun­da­tion for his dis­ser­ta­tion, anoth­er sem­i­nal work in the devel­op­ment of game the­o­ry, for which Nash was award­ed the Nobel Prize in Eco­nom­ic Sci­ences in 1994.

The reward of invent­ing a new field is hav­ing a slim bib­li­og­ra­phy.

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Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in June, 2015.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Short­est-Known Paper Pub­lished in a Seri­ous Math Jour­nal: Two Suc­cinct Sen­tences

The World Record for the Short­est Math Arti­cle: 2 Words

Doc­tor­al Dis­ser­ta­tion as a Graph­ic Nov­el: Read a Free Excerpt of Nick Sou­sa­nis’ Unflat­ten­ing

How to Dance Your Dis­ser­ta­tion: See the Win­ning Video in the 2014 “Dance Your PhD” Con­test

Umber­to Eco’s How To Write a The­sis: A Wit­ty, Irrev­er­ent & High­ly Prac­ti­cal Guide Now Out in Eng­lish