Rosemarie Nagel and Miklos Pinter have sent me the following story about how Miklos helped design the game-theoretic image on the Hungarian coin issued in memory of John Harsanyi's 100th birthday.
"The Harsanyi coin told by Miklos Pinter
The MNB (National Bank of Hungary) has a series of coins dedicated to famous Hungarians (see: MNB Collector Coins), including von Neumann, George Oláh, Imre Kertész, György Cziffra, among others.
In the summer of 2019, I was invited by the MNB to join a board responsible for planning a collector coin honoring János Harsányi on the centenary of his birth (1920). The MNB found me through one of my (former) colleagues, recognizing me as an expert on Harsányi’s contributions that led to his Nobel Prize.
I served as the scientific expert on the board. The other members included artists, coin production experts, and MNB officials. My role was to ensure the scientific "message" of the coin was accurate and meaningful. The coin designs follow a structure: one side features a portrait of the person (which was not my area), while the other side presents a motif, symbol, or image representing their scientific contribution—that side was my responsibility.
To start, I gave a talk to the participating artists (sculptors) who were preparing to submit designs. My presentation covered essential background on Harsányi and, more importantly, the main contribution that earned him the Nobel Prize: the concept of type space. With one exception, all invited artists attended. The atmosphere was pleasant; we had good discussions during and after the talk. It was informal, and I felt satisfied with how it went—it seemed the artists appreciated it too.
A few months later, the artists submitted their sketches—four or five proposals, each with a portrait on one side and a motif on the other.
Here came the surprise: the artists had clearly ignored my talk. Instead, they googled “game theory,” found images online, and based their designs on those. The proposed motifs included things like matrix games and extensive form games, which are only loosely related to Harsányi’s work. Crucially, none of the proposals reflected his key contribution involving type spaces. In hindsight, I realized this was partly my fault. In my talk, I used no visual tools—no images or illustrations—which was a mistake. Artists think visually, and my purely verbal presentation, though scientifically accurate, was practically useless for their purposes.
The board evaluated the proposals. The portraits were excellent, and the artists on the board selected the best one—it was truly beautiful, and I fully agreed, even though it wasn't my area of expertise.
The motif side, however, was a different story. I judged all the proposed designs as inadequate. They were either unrelated to Harsányi or depicted concepts associated with other scientists. I therefore recommended rejecting all of them.
The board accepted my recommendation but raised concerns: time was tight (this was already September 2019, and the coin had to be issued by May 2020), and it was unclear whether the artists could come up with a new, meaningful design in time.
Some board members informally emailed me, asking what could be done. I replied that the proposed motifs weren’t acceptable, but I shared an idea: Imagine a staircase—either rectangular or triangular—that rises or descends infinitely. In the middle of this staircase, there is a ladder stretching directly from the starting point to infinity.
They responded immediately and liked the idea. I hadn’t drawn anything—just described it in a few sentences. Later, we had a phone call, and I explained that the staircase represents a belief hierarchy, while the ladder represents a type—two different ways to reach the same end. This, essentially, is Harsányi’s insight.
They appreciated the concept even more after that conversation. The board then narrowed the selection to two artists and asked them to create a design for the motif side based on my description.
By December 2019, I received the revised designs, particularly one that I really liked. You can see it as the final version of the coin here: 👉 Harsányi Collector Coin – MNB
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Collector coin issuance on the centenary of Nobel Memorial Prize winner János Harsányi’s birth
"The Magyar Nemzeti Bank [issued] a silver collector coin with a face value of 10,000 forints and its non-ferrous metal version of 2,000 forints, on the 100th anniversary of János Harsányi’s birth, the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics awarded scientist, on 29 May 2020. By issuing this collector coin, the MNB wishes to pay tribute to the renowned researcher of the game theory, who was a co-recipient of the 1994 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences along with two other scientists, John Forbes Nash and Reinhald Selten ‘For his ground-breaking work in the area of non-cooperative game theory and equilibrium analysis'. The collector coins were designed by sculptor Balázs Pelcz.
"János Harsányi, a Hungarian Nobel Memorial Prize laureate in Economic Sciences, was born in Budapest on 29 May 1920. His primary field of research was game theory, he was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for the results he achieved in incomplete information games in 1994 as a co-recipient with John Forbes Nash and Reinhard Selten ‘For his ground-breaking work in the area of non-cooperative game theory and equilibrium analysis'. In the field of game theory, they were the first scientists to receive the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences.
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