Past Awards
The Lanchester Prize for 2019 is awarded to Tim Roughgarden for his book Twenty Lectures on Algorithmic Game Theory, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge,
United Kingdom, 2016.
Algorithmic game theory has emerged over the last two decades as a new field of great importance to operations research and to computer science for analyzing
complex problems in which self-interested parties must interact. This book provides a very accessible graduate-level introduction to the most important concepts and developments in game theory and its applications. Twenty topics, such as mechanism design, selfish routing and the price of anarchy, and the computation and characterization of game equilibria, are presented as lessons, or “lectures,” in this very well-structured book. The book is beautifully written and conversational in tone, yet without sacrificing any rigor. Moreover, the content is complemented with a compelling set of illustrative applications such as for wireless spectrum auctions, kidney exchange, and network routing. The book is designed to support learning: each chapter concludes with a summary of the key lessons, followed by exercises to reinforce these points and then more challenging problems that lead the reader to results from recent research. Undoubtedly, this book has and will continue to be very influential in educating a generation of students on modern game theory and its impact.
The Committee members (Stephen Graves, chair, Shane Henderson, Eva Lee, Candace Yano, and Yinyu Ye) are pleased to designate Tim Roughgarden as recipient of the 2019 Lanchester Prize.