“Game theory concepts were first explicitly applied in evolutionary biology by Lewontin (1961). His approach, however, was to picture a species as playing a game against nature, and to seek strategies which minimised the probability of extinction. A similar line has been taken by Slobodkin & Rapoport (1974). In contrast, here we picture members of a population as playing games against each other, and consider the population dynamics and equilibria which can arise.”

—  John Maynard Smith, book Evolution and the Theory of Games

Source: Evolution and the Theory of Games (1973), p. 2.

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John Maynard Smith9
British theoretical evolutionary biologist and geneticist 1920–2004

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