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June 14, 1998

Between Genius and Madness

In 1949, John Nash laid the foundations of game theory; 10 years later, he was found
to be schizophrenic.

Related Links 

 The Lost Years of a Nobel Laureate, Sylvia Nasar's profile of

John Nash for The New York Times, November 13, 1994
 David Goodstein Reviews 'A Beautiful Mind'  (June 11, 1998)
 First Chapter: 'A Beautiful Mind'

By SIMON SINGH

n Dec. 5, 1994, Vice President Al Gore

announced the opening of what was to
be called the greatest auction ever. The
Government was selling off licenses that
would allow companies to set up mobile
phone networks using particular sections
of the radio spectrum. Three months A BEAUTIFUL MIND
later, when bidding had concluded, the By Sylvia Nasar.
Illustrated. 459 pp. New
Treasury was $7 billion richer, and the York:
auction was proclaimed a resounding Simon & Schuster. $25.
success. However, the most important
aspect of the auction was not so much
 the amount of money raised, but rather that it was organized
according to an innovative and revolutionary principle and was a
concrete vindication of game theory, one of the most important
developments in modern economics.

''A Beautiful Mind'' is a biography of John Forbes Nash Jr., the

brilliant mathematician who laid the foundations of game theory
in 1949 at the age of 21. Sylvia Nasar, who writes about
economics for The New York Times, describes in some detail the
complex theory that ultimately led to a Nobel Prize in Economics
in 1994; but more important, she has written a touching account of
a man caught between genius and madness. For three decades
Nash suffered from severe bouts of paranoid schizophrenia, and as
a result he spent extended periods in mental hospitals, he lost his
family and, worst of all for a mathematician, he could no longer
solve profound problems.

Nash arrived at Princeton in 1948. Fine Hall was the home of the
university's mathematics department, and each day at half past
three some of the finest minds on the planet would gather for
afternoon tea. Eccentricity was the order of the day, and the
newcomer fitted in perfectly. He took a particular liking to the
board games played at teatime, such as go, backgammon, chess
and kriegspiel (a form of chess in which each player is unaware of
the other's moves), and soon invented a game of his own. ''Nash,''
or ''John,'' is an example of a two-person zero-sum game with
perfect information. That is to say, if one player wins, then the
other must lose (zero-sum), and at each stage both players are
aware of the state of play (perfect information). The study of such
games and how to devise winning strategies had been the passion
of one of Princeton's greatest
luminaries, John von Neumann. Nash
became fascinated by von Neumann's
research and went on to take it to an
even more sophisticated level.

Nash became interested in games in which there were

several players who were not aware of all the facts and
who could potentially be winners if they cooperated. For
example, consider a game known as the Prisoner's
Dilemma. The police arrest two suspects, who are in fact

John Nash in the early 1950's.

From ''A Beautiful Mind''
both guilty, and question them in separate cells. If they are loyal to each other and
refuse to turn state's evidence, then they will both be sentenced to one year in jail. But
if one betrays the other, then he is immediately released and his partner is sentenced to
five years. Finally, if the prisoners betray each other, then they are both sentenced to
three years. The dilemma is this: Imagine you are one of the prisoners -- what would
you do, remain loyal or betray your partner? Bear in mind that you have no inkling of
your partner's plan.

One analysis is as follows: If your partner is going to betray you,

then you should certainly betray him. This sentences you to only
three years, as opposed to five years. Alternatively, if your partner
is going to remain loyal, then you should still betray him. This
would allow you to go free, rather than being sentenced to one
year in jail. You do not know if your partner is going to betray
you or remain loyal, but in either case it seems that you should
betray him.

Although this is a perfectly logical conclusion, it is, in a way,

absurd. Your partner will probably think the same way as you,
and so you will end up betraying each other, and both of you will
spend three years in jail. However, it would clearly be a better
overall strategy if both of you remained loyal, in which case you
would both spend only a year in jail. The question is, how can two
parties cooperate to achieve a mutually beneficial result when
betrayal is such a tempting strategy?

In a paper written when he was a graduate student, Nash outlined

a radical new approach to problems like the Prisoner's Dilemma,
involving the so-called Nash equilibrium. It was Nash's greatest
mathematical creation. In decades to come it would be applied to
economic situations, but initially its implications were largely
overlooked, except by the military, which used it to help develop
a cold war strategy. In theory, if the superpowers could find a way
of cooperating, then this would lead to a reduction in weapons and
to cost savings for both sides.

Lack of recognition from economists for his game-theory research

encouraged Nash to move on to other areas of research, and over
the next decade he fearlessly attacked a whole range of problems
from pure number theory to cosmology. On one occasion he
developed a theory describing how gravity fields could generate a
form of friction on photons and tried to convince Einstein of his
ideas. His theory was flawed, but it is a testament to the
extraordinary audacity of Nash, a mathematician with a limited
knowledge of physics, that he dared to challenge Einstein on his
home territory.

In the first few weeks of 1959, at the age of 30, Nash suddenly
and tragically made the transition between eccentricity and
madness. He accused one mathematician of entering his office to
steal his ideas. He began to hear alien messages and spoke of the
urgent need to establish a single world government. When he was
offered a prestigious chair at the University of Chicago, he
declined because he said he was planning to become Emperor of
Antarctica. Initially his wife, Alicia, and his colleagues tried to
cover up the problems, particularly since M.I.T. was also
considering him for his first tenured position, but by April his
behavior had become so disturbed that he was committed to
McLean Hospital in Belmont, Mass., where it was determined he
was schizophrenic. For the next 30 years he would make a series
of temporary recoveries, return to his home, lapse and then be
forced back into a mental hospital.

As each decade passed, the treatments varied. In 1961 for six

weeks, five days a week, Nash was injected with insulin to induce
a comatose state. If blood-sugar levels dropped too low, patients
would suffer spontaneous seizures, sometimes biting their tongues
and occasionally breaking bones. Nash described the treatment as
torture. The theory was that starving the brain of sugar would kill
marginally functioning brain cells, but the therapy was soon
phased out because it was considered too expensive and
dangerous. The alternative was electroshock therapy. Nash's
colleagues and family refused to allow this treatment on the
grounds that there was evidence that it numbed the brain, and they
believed that the ultimate nightmare for Nash would be to lose his
genius.

NASAR documents in detail the years leading up to Nash's

schizophrenia, including his father's death, the birth of an
illegitimate son, his arrest for indecent exposure, his marriage and
lack of recognition, but the exact cause of his breakdown remains
a mystery. Equally puzzling is that in the late 1980's he made a
remarkable recovery. During his absence from the sane world his
 ideas had been accepted and were beginning to be implemented.
His return to academic research was marked by a series of
accolades, including the most prestigious of all, the Nobel Prize,
for the work he had done on game theory back in the 1940's.

Although I would have appreciated a clearer and longer

description of game theory, ''A Beautiful Mind'' tells a moving
story and offers a remarkable look into the arcane world of
mathematics and the tragedy of madness.

Simon Singh is a documentary filmmaker and the author of

''Fermat's Enigma: The Quest to Solve the World's Greatest
Mathematical Problem.''
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