Overview
In this biography, Sylvia Nasar recreates the life of a mathematical genius whose brilliant career was cut short by schizophrenia and who, after three decades of devastating mental illness, miraculously recovered and was honored with a Nobel Prize. A Beautiful Mind traces the meteoric rise of John Forbes Nash, Jr., from his lonely childhood in West Virginia to his student years at Princeton, where he encountered Albert Einstein, John von Neumann, and a host of other mathematical luminaries. At 21, the handsome, ambitious, eccentric graduate student invented what would become the most influential theory of rational human behavior in modern social science. Nash's contribution to game theory would ultimately revolutionize the field of economics. At 30, Nash was poised to take his dreamed-of place in the pantheon of history's greatest mathematicians. Then Nash suffered a catastrophic mental breakdown. Nasar details Nash's harrowing descent into insanity - his bizarre delusions that he was the Prince of Peace; his resignation from MIT, flight to Europe, and attempt to renounce his American citizenship; his repeated hospitalizations, from the storied McLean, where he came to know the poet Robert Lowell, to the crowded wards of a state hospital; his "enforced interludes of rationality" during which he was able to return briefly to mathematical research. At age 66, twin miracles - a spontaneous remission of his illness and the sudden decision of the Nobel Prize committee to honor his contributions to game theory - restored the world to him. Nasar recounts the bitter behind-the-scenes battle in Stockholm over whether to grant the ultimate honor in science to a man thought to be "mad." She describes Nash's current ambition to pursue new mathematical breakthroughs and his efforts to be a loving father to his adult son.Synopsis
About the Author A former economics correspondent for the New York Times,Sylvia Nasar is the Knight Professor of Journalism at Columbia University. She lives in Tarrytown, New York. Product Description "How could you, a mathematician, believe that extraterrestrials were sending you messages?" the visitor from Harvard asked the West Virginian with the movie-star looks and Olympian manner. Thus begins the true story of John Nash, the mathematical genius who was a legend by age thirty when he slipped into madness, and who -- thanks to the selflessness fo a beautiful woman and the loyalty of the mathematics community -- emerged after decades of ghostlike exixstence to win a Nobel Prize and world acclaim, the inspiration for a major motion picutre. Sylvia Nasar's award-winning biography is a drama about the mystery of the human mind, triumph over incredivble adversity, and the healing power of love. From Library Journal Those who enjoyed the compelling story of John Nash as presented in the Academy Award-winning film may wish to know more about the real mathematical genius. This audiobook will give the listener a deeper insight into Nash's mind a mind that fired with flashes of intuition, that saw the answers first and then worked out their proofs, a mind that came to believe that aliens from outer space were sending him messages. A Beautiful Mind tells the story of a man who faces the greatest foe of that genius schizophrenia. It's about the horrors that Nash endured at the hands of the psychiatric profession and in the grip of his delusions. It also relates how Nash was helped by his colleagues at Princeton and his wife, Alicia, and how perhaps this stability and sheltering care allowed him to rationalize away his delusions. An enthralling tale, masterfully performed by Edward Herrmann. Highly recommended for all libraries. Theresa Connors, Arkansas Tech Univ., RussellvilleCopyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. A Beautiful MindThe Life of Mathematical Genius and Nobel Laureate John NashBy Sylvia NasarSimon & SchusterCopyright © 2001Sylvia NasarAll right reserved.ISBN: 9780743509886Chapter One Bluefield 1928-45 I was taught to feel, perhaps too much The self-sufficing power of solitude. --WILLIAM WORDSWORTH AMONG JOHN NASH'S EARLIEST MEMORIES is one in which, as a child ofabout two or three, he is listening to his maternal grandmother playthe piano in the front parlor of the old Tazewell Street house, high ona breezy hill overlooking the city of Bluefield, West Virginia. It was in this parlor that his parents were married on September 6,1924, a Saturday, at eight in the morning to the chords of a Protestanthymn, amid basketfuls of blue hydrangeas, goldenrod, black-eyed susans,and white and gold marguerites. The thirty-two-year-old groom was talland gravely handsome. The bride, four years his junior, was a willowy,dark-eyed beauty. Her narrow, brown cut-velvet dress emphasized herslender waist and long, graceful back. She had sewn it herself, perhapshaving chosen its deep shade out of deference to her father's recentdeath. She carried a bouquet of the same old-fashioned flowers thatfilled the room, and she wore more of these blooms woven through herthick chestnut hair. The effect was brilliant rather than subdued. Thevibrant browns and golds, which would have made a woman with a lighter,more typically southern complexion look wan, embellished her richcoloring and lent her a striking and sophisticated air. The ceremony, conducted by ministers from Christ Episcopal Churchand Bland Street Methodist Church, was simple and brief, witnessed byfewer than a dozen family members and old friends. By eleven o'clock,the newlyweds were standing at the ornate, wrought-iron gate in frontof the rambling, white 1890s house waving their goodbyes. Then,according to an account that appeared some weeks later in theAppalachian Power Company'sEditorials
From Barnes & Noble
The Barnes & Noble ReviewJohn Nash was a prodigy. A star of the already prestigious Princeton and MIT mathematics departments in the 1950s, Nash was known for his ability to penetrate and solve "deep problems" -- those thought virtually unsolvable by his peers. His greatest contribution came with his advancement of game theory that revolutionized economics. A professor in his 20s, he was a leader in his field, a recognized genius.
And then his life and career collapsed. In 1959, at the age of 30, Nash had a schizophrenic breakdown that saw him disappear from the world of mathematics. He lost his job, his wife, and, seemingly, his sanity.
Sylvia Nasar's detailed biography of the man, his achievements, and his descent into mental illness is as affectionate towards its subject as it is probing into the often oddly parallel worlds of academia and mental hospitals, genius and madness.
Nasar stays focused on the life of Nash but manages to bring to it insights into the fine line between ill and well. Notably, her behind-the-scenes look at the Nobel Prize committee's consideration of Nash's work and their trepidation at awarding their prestigious prize to a "madman" is an interesting discussion.
Ultimately, the story has a bizarre and happy ending. At 66, Nash inexplicably recovered from his illness, returned to academia, and was awarded the Nobel Prize for economics. (Greg Sewell)
New York Newsday
A triumph of intellectual biography.New York Times
Dazzling...reads like a fine novel.Richard Dooling
"Read no history: nothing but biography," Disraeli once wrote, "for that is life without theory." In A Beautiful Mind, Sylvia Nasar, an economics correspondent for The New York Times, presents the life "without theory" of John Forbes Nash Jr., a mathematical genius and inventor of theories of rational behavior, who was a wunderkind at Princeton when it was populated by the likes of Albert Einstein, John von Neumann and other 20th century luminaries. Nash's 26-page Ph.D. thesis, "Non-Cooperative Games" (written at Princeton, while he was still in his early 20s), eventually won him a Nobel Prize in economics in 1994, but only after his career was interrupted by a 30-year bout with paranoid schizophrenia.Disraeli's admonition is well taken here, because Nasar's story of Nash's career presents a case study in the mysterious relationship between genius and madness, and a possible metaphor for a civilization that has seen the miraculous achievements of 20th century science overshadowed at times by the madness of nuclear war -- a tale that could have been smothered by historical or psychiatric theories.
A Beautiful Mind chronicles Nash's ascent to the Olympian heights of Princeton, the infamous postwar RAND think tank and MIT, where Nash mingled with many of the geniuses who had arguably "won" World War II by applying math, science and game theories to the deadly arts of nuclear war. Despite his condescending manner and personality quirks -- Nash was known for incessantly whistling Bach's Little Fugue, chewing empty coffee cups and having notoriously complicated romantic relationships with both men and women -- he flourished in the elite hierarchy of first-rate mathematicians. Most of his peers agreed with the eminent geometrician Mikhail Gromov, who called Nash "the most remarkable mathematician of the second half of the century."
In a profession that "placed a certain premium on eccentricity and outrageousness" and in which "a lack of social graces was considered part and parcel of being real mathematicians," Nash was more outrageous, eccentric and lacking in social skills and emotional attachments than most. But no matter how outlandish his behavior, Nash survived, even excelled, despite his haughty, sometimes cruel treatment of loved ones and colleagues.
Then, when Nash was barely 30 and about to be made a full professor at MIT, his friends and fellow mathematicians witnessed a "strange and horrible metamorphosis" that began when Nash dressed as an infant at a New Year's Eve party in 1958, and then crossed the line two weeks later when he slouched into the common room at MIT with a copy of The New York Times, claiming that "abstract powers from outer space, or perhaps it was foreign governments, were communicating with him" through the newspaper. For the next 30 years of his life, Nash -- or rather the ghost of Nash -- haunted the campuses where he had previously reigned as a genius, until he emerged from his delusions and accepted the Nobel Prize for Economics in 1994.
Nasar shows admirable restraint in presenting the seamier details of Nash's private life; she manages to stay focused on telling the story of a genius who became a schizophrenic, without overreaching and attempting explanations. Instead of facile theories, the reader enjoys wonder and astonishment -- frightened and intrigued by the intimate juxtaposition of genius and mental illness in a single beautiful mind. Nash said it best when a teaching associate asked him how he could believe that aliens were sending him coded messages. He responded: "Because the ideas I had about supernatural beings came to me the same way that my mathematical ideas did. So I took them seriously."
— Salon
Simon Singh
Sylvia Nasar...has written a touching account of a man caught between genius and madness....A Beautiful Mind tells a moving story and offers a remarkable look into the arcane world of mathematics and the tragedy of madness.— The New York Times Book Review
Publishers Weekly
Nasar has written a notable biography of mathematical genius John Forbes Nash (b. 1928), a founder of game theory, a RAND Cold War strategist and winner of a 1994 Nobel Prize in economics. She charts his plunge into paranoid schizophrenia beginning at age 30 and his spontaneous recovery in the early 1990s after decades of torment. He attributes his remission to will power; he stopped taking antipsychotic drugs in 1970 but underwent a half-dozen involuntary hospitalizations. Born in West Virginia, the flamboyant mathematical wizard rubbed elbows at Princeton and MIT with Einstein, John von Neumann and Norbert Wiener. He compartmentalized his secret personal life, shows Nasar, hiding his homosexual affairs with colleagues from his mistress, a nurse who bore him a son out of wedlock, while he also courted Alicia Larde, an MIT physics student whom he married in 1957. Their son, John, born in 1959, became a mathematician and suffers from episodic schizophrenia. Alicia divorced Nash in 1963, but they began living together again as a couple around 1970. Today Nash, whose mathematical contributions span cosmology, geometry, computer architecture and international trade, devotes himself to caring for his son. Nasar, an economics correspondent for The New York Times, is equally adept at probing the puzzle of schizophrenia and giving a nontechnical context for Nash's mathematical and scientific ideas.Library Journal
Those who enjoyed the compelling story of John Nash as presented in the Academy Award-winning film may wish to know more about the real mathematical genius. This audiobook will give the listener a deeper insight into Nash's mind a mind that fired with flashes of intuition, that saw the answers first and then worked out their proofs, a mind that came to believe that aliens from outer space were sending him messages. A Beautiful Mind tells the story of a man who faces the greatest foe of that genius schizophrenia. It's about the horrors that Nash endured at the hands of the psychiatric profession and in the grip of his delusions. It also relates how Nash was helped by his colleagues at Princeton and his wife, Alicia, and how perhaps this stability and sheltering care allowed him to rationalize away his delusions. An enthralling tale, masterfully performed by Edward Herrmann. Highly recommended for all libraries. Theresa Connors, Arkansas Tech Univ., Russellville Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.Booknews
A dramatic and moving biography of a mathematical genius whose brilliant career was cut short by schizophrenia, and who, after three decades of devastating mental illness, miraculously recovered and was honored with a Nobel Prize.Business Week
A staggering feat of writing and reporting.Michael J. Mandel
A fascinating account of creativity barely under control, of a mathematical genius who was driven by -- and eventually overwhelmed by -- his own innter demons. A staggering feat of writing and reporting.— Business Week