Math genius inspired Hollywood movie
TRENTON, N.J. — John Forbes Nash Jr. was a mathematical genius whose struggle with schizophrenia was chronicled in the 2001 movie A Beautiful Mind.
Known as brilliant and eccentric, Nash was associated with Princeton University for many years, most recently serving as a senior research mathematician.
He won the Nobel Prize in economics in 1994 for his work in game theory, which offered insight into the dynamics of human rivalry. It is considered one of the most influential ideas of the 20th century.
Nash, 86, of Princeton Township, died along with his wife, Alicia, when the taxi in which they were riding home from the airport Saturday crashed on the New Jersey Turnpike. He was 86.
Russell Crowe, who portrayed Nash in A Beautiful Mind, tweeted that he was “stunned.”
“An amazing partnership,” he wrote. “Beautiful minds, beautiful hearts.”
His co-star in the film, Jennifer Connelly, called the couple “an inspiration,” and the film’s director, Ron Howard, tweeted that “it was an honour telling part of their story.”
Just a few days ago, Nash had received a prize from the Norwegian Academy of Sciences and Letters in Oslo with New York University mathematician Louis Nirenberg, who said he’d chatted with the couple for an hour at the airport in Newark before they’d got in the cab.
Princeton University President Christopher Eisgruber said the Nashes were special members of the university community.
“John’s remarkable achievements inspired generations of mathematicians, economists and scientists who were influenced by his brilliant, groundbreaking work in game theory, and the story of his life with Alicia moved millions of readers and moviegoers who marvelled at their courage in the face of daunting challenges,” Eisgruber said in a statement.
The 2001 film A Beautiful Mind won four Oscars, including best picture and best director, and generated interest in Nash’s life story.
The movie was based on an unauthorized biography by Sylvia Nasar, who wrote that Nash’s contemporaries found him “immensely strange” and “slightly cold, a bit superior, somewhat secretive.”
Much of his demeanour likely stemmed from mental illness, which began emerging in 1959 when Alicia was pregnant with a son.
The film, though, did not mention Nash’s older son or the years that he and Alicia spent living together after divorcing.
The couple split in 1963, then resumed living together several years later and finally remarried in 2001.
Born in Bluefield, W.Va. in 1928, Nash had read the classic Men of Mathematics by E.T. Bell by the time he was in high school.
He planned to follow in his father’s footsteps in electrical engineering and studied for three years at the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh (now Carnegie Mellon University), but instead developed a passion for mathematics.
He then went to Princeton, where he worked on his equilibrium theory and, in 1950, received his doctorate with a dissertation on nonco-operative games.
The thesis contained the definition and properties of what would later be called the Nash equilibrium.
Nash then taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for several years and held a research post at Brandeis University before eventually returning to Princeton.