After a brief family exile in Saxony and Austria, Selten returned to Hesse, Germany, after the war and, in high school, read an article in Fortune magazine about game theory by the business writer John D. McDonald. He recalled later, he would occupy his "mind with problems of elementary geometry and algebra" while walking back and forth to school during that time.[2][3] He studied mathematics at Goethe University Frankfurt and obtained his diploma in 1957. He then worked as scientific assistant to Heinz Sauermann until 1967. In 1959, he married with Elisabeth Langreiner. They had no children. In 1961, he also received his doctorate in Frankfurt in mathematics with a thesis on the evaluation of n-person games.
He was a visiting professor at Berkeley and taught from 1969 to 1972 at the Free University of Berlin and, from 1972 to 1984, at the University of Bielefeld. He then accepted a professorship at the University of Bonn. There he built the BonnEconLab, a laboratory for experimental economic research, where he was active even after his retirement.
He is also well known for his work in bounded rationality, and can be considered one of the founding fathers of experimental economics. With Gerd Gigerenzer he edited the book Bounded Rationality: The Adaptive Toolbox (2001). He developed an example of a game called Selten's Horse because of its extensive form representation. His last work was "Impulse Balance Theory and its Extension by an Additional Criterion".
He is noted for his publishing in non-refereed journals to avoid being forced to make unwanted changes to his work.[7]
Bibliography
Preispolitik der Mehrproduktenunternehmung in der statischen Theorie, Berlin-Heidelberg-New York: Springer-Verlag, 1970, ISBN978-3-642-48888-7 - in German
General Equilibrium with Price-Making Firms (with Thomas Marschak), Lecture Notes in Economics and Mathematical Systems, Berlin-Heidelberg-New York: Springer-Verlag, 1974, ISBN 978-3-662-07369-8
A General Theory of Equilibrium Selection in Games (with John C. Harsanyi), Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT-Press. (1988)
Models of Strategic Rationality, Theory and Decision Library, Series C: Game Theory, Mathematical Programming and Operations Research, Dordrecht-Boston-London: Kluwer Academic Publishers. (1988)
Game Equilibrium Models IV, Berlin, New York, Springer Verlag, 1991, ISBN 978-3-662-07369-8.
Rational Interaction - Essays in Honor of John C. Harsanyi, Berlin, New York, Springer-Verlag, 1992, ISBN 978-3-642-08136-1.
Enkonduko en la Teorion de Lingvaj Ludoj – Ĉu mi lernu Esperanton? (with Jonathan Pool), Berlin-Paderborn: Akademia Libroservo, Institut für Kybernetik. (1995) – in Esperanto
Game Theory and Economic Behavior: Selected Essays, 2. vol Cheltenham-Northampton: Edward Elgar Publishing. (1999)
New edition of: Models of Strategic Rationality (1988), with a Chinese Introduction. Outstanding Academic Works on Economics by Nobel Prize Winners. Dordrecht-Boston-London: Kluwer Academic Publishers. (2000)
Chinese Translation of: Models of Strategic Rationality (1988). Outstanding Academic Works on Economics by Nobel Prize Winners. Dordrecht-Boston-London: Kluwer Academic Publishers. (2000)
Russian Translation of: A General Theory of Equilibrium Selection in Games (with John C. Harsanyi), Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT-Press. (2000)
Gigerenzer, G., & Selten, R. (Eds.). (2001). Bounded rationality: The adaptive toolbox. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press.
Impulse Balance Theory and its Extension by an Additional Criterion. BoD. (2015)