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Thomas Schelling, an economist who won a Nobel Prize for using game theory to explain nuclear strategy, has died, a colleague said Wednesday. He was 95. ABC news agency reports.

Schelling, a longtime Harvard University professor who finished his career at the University of Maryland, died Tuesday morning at his home in Bethesda, Maryland, said Richard Zeckhauser, a Harvard colleague who knew Schelling for 58 years. The cause of death was not immediately confirmed and no autopsy was conducted, Zeckhauser said.

Schelling was awarded the Nobel Prize in economics in 2005, along with Robert Aumann, "for having enhanced our understanding of conflict and cooperation through game-theory analysis," the Nobel committee said.

Schelling's best-known book was "The Strategy of Conflict" (1960), in which he used game theory, the mathematical analysis of strategies used in competitive situations, to analyze negotiations between nuclear powers. He argued that a negotiating party can sometimes strengthen its position in a counterintuitive way, by eliminating some of its own options. His work made him a leading intellectual on the subject of nuclear war and peace.

Schelling continued his studies into his 90s and was planning to give two talks on global climate change, Zeckhauser told The Associated Press.