The late Jean-Francois Mertens (11 March 1946-17 July 2012) was a Belgian game theorist and mathematical economist. He earned his PhD from the Universite Catholique de Louvain, where he spent his career, and was heavily involved with the university's Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE). Mertens was one of the world's leaders in game theory and economic theory. He is the author and coauthor of seminal papers on equilibrium selection in games, formulation of Bayesian analysis, repeated games, stochastic games, the strategic foundations of general equilibrium theory, social choice theory, and dynamic general equilibrium. He was a founding member of the Center for Game Theory in Economics, State University of New York at Stony Brook, and remained an affiliated member until his death. He was elected a Fellow of the Econometric Society in 1981.
