- Born
- Died
- Birth nameJohn Forbes Nash Jr.
- Nickname
- Big Brains
- Height6′ 1″ (1.85 m)
- John Nash was an American mathematician who made fundamental contributions to game theory, differential geometry, and the study of partial differential equations. Nash's work has provided insight into the factors that govern chance and decision-making inside complex systems found in everyday life.
His theories are widely used in economics. Serving as a Senior Research Mathematician at Princeton University during the latter part of his life, he shared the 1994 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences with game theorists Reinhard Selten and John Harsanyi. In 2015, he also shared the Abel Prize with Louis Nirenberg for his work on nonlinear partial differential equations.
Nash's mental illness first began to manifest in the form of paranoia; his wife later describing his behavior as erratic. Nash seemed to believe that all men who wore red ties were part of a communist conspiracy against him; Nash mailed letters to embassies in Washington, D.C., declaring that they were establishing a government. Nash's psychological issues crossed into his professional life when he gave an American Mathematical Society lecture at Columbia University in 1959. Originally intended to present proof of the Riemann hypothesis, the lecture was incomprehensible. Colleagues in the audience immediately realized that something was wrong.
He was admitted to McLean Hospital in April 1959, staying through May of the same year. There, he was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or DSM, a person suffering from the disorder is typically dominated by relatively stable, often paranoid, fixed beliefs that are either false, over-imaginative or unrealistic, and usually accompanied by experiences of seemingly real perception of something not actually present. Further signs are marked particularly by auditory and perceptional disturbances, a lack of motivation for life, and mild clinical depression.
In 1961, Nash was admitted to the New Jersey State Hospital at Trenton. Over the next nine years, he spent periods in psychiatric hospitals, where he received both antipsychotic medications and insulin shock therapy.
His struggles with his illness and his recovery became the basis for Sylvia Nasar's biography, A Beautiful Mind, as well as a film of the same name starring Russell Crowe.
On May 23, 2015, Nash and his wife, Alicia Nash, were killed in a car crash while riding in a taxi on the New Jersey Turnpike.- IMDb Mini Biography By: Anonymous
- SpousesAlicia Nash(June 1, 2001 - May 23, 2015) (his death)Alicia Nash(February 1957 - August 2, 1963) (divorced, 1 child)
- According to Sylvia Nasar's biography of Nash, Alicia allowed him to live with her again in 1970 - seven years after she divorced him - but as a boarder. After he won the Nobel Prize in 1994, they renewed their relationship.
- Son John Charles Martin remained nameless for a year because Alicia, having just committed Nash to a mental hospital, felt that he should have a say in what to name the baby. As was his parents, John grew up to be a mathematician, but, like his father, he was diagnosed a paranoid schizophrenic.
- Sons: John David Stier (born June 19, 1953) by Eleanor Stier; John Charles Martin Nash (born May 20, 1959) by wife Alicia. John David Stier became a nurse (his mother's profession); John Charles Martin Nash became a mathematician, but, like his father, was diagnosed a paranoid schizophrenic.
- Is not the only legendary genius named John Nash to have suffered from a psychological disorder. The British architect John Nash, among whose greatest works were Buckingham Palace and the Royal Pavillion at Brighton, suffered from high-functioning autism.
- According to the Adam Curtis' Documentary "The Trap: What happened to our dream of freedom?", the theories of John Nash were applied unsuccessfully by a man named Alain Enthoeven in both Vietnam and the British Public Sector Services.
- You don't have to be a mathematician to have a feel for numbers. A movie, by the way, was made - sort of a small-scale offbeat movie - called Pi recently. I think it starts off with a big string of digits running across the screen, and then there are people who get concerned with various things, and in the end this Bible code idea comes up. And that ties in with numbers, so the relation to numbers is not necessarily scientific, and even when I was mentally disturbed, I had a lot of interest in numbers.
- In grade school, I would be doing arithmetic, and I found myself working with larger numbers than other students would be using. I would have several digits, and they would have maybe two or three digits. I would do multiplication and basic operation, but with larger numbers.
- Alicia was in a class that I was teaching. I think it was advanced calculus. She, of course, was one of the few girls that attracted my attention. But as she was, she didn't do well in the class; she had done better in other courses. But she sort of managed to cultivate my attention and so we began to get involved. I don't remember all the details. Of course, this sort of thing is in a way what is not supposed to happen. But of course it does happen to teachers and students. It's just a way you may meet people. Otherwise you don't meet enough.
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