John Forbes Nash

Life and Work

Who is John Nash?

John Forbes Nash, Jr. (born June 13, 1928) is an American mathematician and economist whose theory, geometry, works in game theory, differential geometry, and partial differential equations have provided insight into the forces that govern chance and events inside complex systems in daily life. Nash is also the subject of the Hollywood movie A Beautiful Mind, which was nominated for eight Mind, Oscars (winning four). The film, based on the biography of the same name, focuses on Nash's mathematical genius and his struggle with paranoid schizophrenia. schizophrenia.

Early Life
Nash's younger sister wrote that "Johnny was always different. [My parents] knew he was different. And they knew he was bright. He always wanted to do things his way. At the age of 13, Nash carried out scientific experiments in his room. In his autobiography, Bell's Nash notes that E.T. Bell's book, Men of Mathematics in particular, the essay on Fermat first sparked his interest in mathematics.

PostPost-graduate life
Nash's advisor and former Carnegie Tech genius. professor, R.J. Duffin: "This man is a genius. Duffin: Though Nash was accepted by Harvard University, University, he decided to go to Princeton where he was offered the John S. Kennedy fellowship. fellowship. He earned a doctorate in 1950 with a 28 page dissertation on non-cooperative games. non-

Marriage
In 1951, Nash went to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as a C. L. E. Moore Instructor in the mathematics faculty. There, he met Alicia Lpez-Harrison de Lpez1, 1933), Lard (born January 1, 1933), a physics student from El Salvador, whom he married Salvador, in February 1957.

Schizophrenia
Nash began to show signs of extreme paranoia and his wife later described his behavior as increasingly erratic, as he began speaking of characters who were putting him in danger. Nash seemed to believe that there was an organization chasing him, in which all men wore "red ties"

Recognition and later career

In 1978, Nash was awarded the John von Neumann Theory Prize for his discovery of nonnon-cooperative equilibria, now called Nash equilibria. equilibria. He won the Leroy P. Steele Prize in 1999. In 1994, he received the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences (along with two others), as a result of his game theory work as a Princeton graduate student.

Film controversy
In 2002, aspects of Nash's personal life were brought to international attention when "mudslinging" ensued over screenwriter Akiva Goldsman's semifictional Goldsman's interpretation of Sylvia Nasar's biography of Nash's life in A Beautiful Mind in relation to the film of the same name