A Beautiful Mind

by Sylvia Nasar

  As we leave him now he is perhaps just hurrying under the Eisenhart gate on his way to Fine Hall … or sitting next to Alicia on the living-room sofa watching Dr. Who on the big television … or losing a game of chess to Johnny … or spending 105 minutes on the telephone comforting Lloyd Shapley after his wife’s death … or giving Harold Kuhn a look like a naughty boy’s when Harold asks whether the lecture notes for Pisa are ready … or sitting at the institute math table with his lunch tray, nodding while Enrico Bombieri, who has just read the love letters of Carrington, bemoans the lost art of letter writing … or, after listening to an astronomy lecture, gazing through a telescope at some distant star glimmering in the night sky… .

  Epilogue

  THE FESTIVE SCENE at the turn-of-the-century frame house opposite the train station might have been that of a golden wedding anniversary: the handsome older couple posing for pictures with family and friends, the basket of pale yellow roses, the 1950s photo of the bride and groom on display for the occasion.

  In fact, John and Alicia Nash were about to say “I do” for the second time, after a nearly forty-year gap in their marriage. For them it was yet another step — “a big step,” according to John — in piecing together lives cruelly shattered by schizophrenia. “The divorce shouldn’t have happened,” he told me. “We saw this as a kind of retraction of that.” Alicia said simply, “We thought it would be a good idea. After all, we’ve been together most of our lives.”

  After Mayor Carole Carson pronounced them man and wife, John was asked to kiss his bride again for the camera. “A second take?” he quipped. “Just like a movie.”

  A few moments before the ceremony Alicia’s cousin spoke to me about “the amazing metamorphosis” he had witnessed in John’s life since the Nobel. It’s not just the many other honors and speaking invitations from around the world that have followed, or the much wider audience that now appreciates the full range of exciting intellectual contributions made during his brief but brilliant career, or even the glamour of having his remarkable story told by Hollywood.

  At seventy-three, John looks and sounds wonderfully well. He feels increasingly certain that he won’t suffer a relapse. “It’s like a continous process rather than just waking up from a dream,” he told a New York Times reporter recently. “When I dream … it sometimes happens that I go back to the system of delusions that’s typical of how I was… and then I wake and then I’m rational again.” Growing self-confidence may be one reason that he is less embarrassed by talking about his past, and now speaks to groups that see his experience as “something that helps to reduce the stigma against people with mental illness.”

  For the first time since resigning from MIT in 1959, he now enjoys a modicum of personal security for himself and his family. Little things that the rest of us take for granted — having a driver’s license again, or getting a credit card — mean a lot. “I feel I can go into a coffee place and spend a few dollars,” Nash told me last year when I was working on a story about how economics Laureates spend their prize checks. “Lots of other academics do that,” he said. “If I was really poor, I couldn’t do that. I was like that.”

  Once threatened by homelessness, John values his home and personal belongings as few of us can. Back at the house after the ceremony, he was looking at a 1950 Parker Brothers version of Hex, the game he’d invented as a Princeton graduate student. He once owned a copy, he said. “I lost so many of my possessions due to my mental illness.”

  He has been able to return to mathematics. “I am working,” he told the Times reporter. He no longer dreams of picking up where he left off, but is glad to be able to do serious work and make a contribution. John is once more a fixture at the math table at the Institute for Advanced Study and at tea in the Fine Hall common room. He now has a grant from the National Science Foundation. The other day he gave a seminar at the Institute about his new research on the theory of bargaining. “It actually wouldn’t have been possible in those earlier days because I’m using computational facilities that didn’t exist in the ’50s and ’60s,” he said. “I’m ready to do a publication now.”

  Even more important, his remission and the Nobel have enabled him to renew broken ties. He has reconnected with old acquaintances from Bluefield, Carnegie, Princeton, and MIT. After today’s ceremony, he gossiped happily with a mathematician and an engineer he first met in his twenties. He and Alicia were going to spend their second honeymoon among friends in Switzerland, where John will be giving a talk at a memorial celebration for Jürgen Moser, who died last year.

  John has been able to share his good fortune with those closest to him. He’s been in touch with John David, the older son who was once lost to him. He spends much of his time with his younger son, John Charles. On his wedding day, he proudly described a mathematical result that Johnny has lately been trying to publish. He and his sister, Martha, still talk on the phone every week. And, as today’s scene suggests, he has come to acknowledge Alicia’s central role in his life.

  As for his biographer, John’s attitude has changed dramatically. While this book was being written, he said to a New York Times reporter, “I adopted a position of Swiss neutrality.” Since its publication, however, “A lot of my friends, family, and relations persuaded me it was a good thing.” Besides, there is so much in the book that he had forgotten or never even knew. At this point in life, he made it clear, retrieving some of the past has been something of a solace.

  When John met Russell Crowe, who plays him in the movie inspired by his life, he told me that his first words to the Australian actor were, “You’re going to have to go through all these transformations!” Even in the three years since the publication of this book, the transformations in Nash’s life have been as remarkable as any that will be portrayed on screen.

  Princeton Junction, New Jersey, June 1, 2001

  Notes

  Prologue

  1. George W. Mackey, professor of mathematics, Harvard University, interview, Cambridge, Mass., 12.14.95.

  2. See, for example, David Halberstam, The Fifties (New York: Favycett Columbine, 1993).

  3. Mikhail Gromov, professor of mathematics, Institut des Hautes-Etudes, Bures-sur-Yvette, France, and Courant Institute, interview, 12.16.97. The claim that Nash ranks among the greatest mathematicians of the postwar era is based on judgment of fellow mathematicians. The topologist John Milnor expressed a nearly universal opinion among mathematicians when he wrote: “To some, the brief paper, written at age 21, for which he has won a Nobel prize in economics, may seem like the least of his achievements.” In “A Celebration of John F. Nash, Jr.,” a special volume, Duke Mathematical Journal, vol. 81, no. 1 (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1995), the game theorist Harold W. Kuhn calls Nash “one of the most original mathematical minds of this century.”

  4. Paul R. Halmos, “The Legend of John von Neumann,” American Mathematical Monthly, vol. 80 (1973), pp. 382–94.

  5. Donald J. Newman, professor of mathematics, Temple University, interview, Philadelphia, 3.2.96.

  6. Harold W. Kuhn, professor of mathematics, Princeton University, interview, 7.26.95.

  7. John Forbes Nash, Jr., remarks at the American Economics Association Nobel luncheon, San Francisco, 1.5.96; plenary lecture, World Congress of Psychiatry, Madrid, 8.26.96.

  8. John Nash, “Parallel Control,” RAND Memorandum no. 1361, 8.7.54; plenary lecture, Madrid, 8.26.96, op. cit.

  9. Interviews with Newman, 3.2.96; Eleanor Stier, 3.13.96.

  10. John Nash, plenary lecture, Madrid, 8.26.96, op. cit.

  11. Jürgen Moser, professor of mathematics, ETH, Zurich, interview, New York City, 3.21.96.

  12. Interviews with Paul Zweifel, professor of physics, Virginia Polytechnic Institute, 10.94; Solomon Leader, professor of mathematics, Rutgers University, 7.9.95; David Gale, professor of mathematics. University of California at Berkeley, 9.20.95; Martin Shubik, professor of economics, Yale University, 9.27.95; Felix Browder, president, American
Mathematical Society, 11.2.95; Melvin Hausner, professor of mathematics, Courant Institute, 1.26.96; Hartley Rogers, professor of mathematics, MIT, Cambridge, 2.16.96; Martin Davis, professor of mathematics, Courant Institute, 2.20.96; Eugenio Calabi, 3.2.96.

  13. Atle Selberg, professor of mathematics, Institute of Advanced Study, interview, Princeton, 8.16.95.

  14. George W. Boehm, “The New Uses of the Abstract,” Fortune (July 1958), p. 127: “Just turned thirty, Nash has already made a reputation as a brilliant mathematician who is eager to tackle the most difficult problems.” Boehm goes on to say that Nash is working on quantum theory and that he invests in the stock market as a hobby.

  15. John von Neumann, “Zur Theorie der Gesellschaftsspiele,” Math. Ann., vol. 100 (1928), pp. 295–320. See also Robert J. Leonard, “From Parlor Games to Social Science: Von Neumann, Morgenstern and the Creation of Game Theory, 1928–1944,” Journal of Economic Literature (1995).

  16. See, for example, Harold Kuhn, ed., Classics in Game Theory (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997); John Eatwell, Murray Milgate, and Peter Newman, The New Palgrave: Game Theory (New York: Norton, 1987); Avinash K. Dixit and Bam J. Nalebuff, Thinking Strategically (New York: Norton, 1991).

  17. Robert J. Leonard, “Reading Cournot, Reading Nash: The Creation and Stabilization of the Nash Equilibrium,” The Economic Journal (May 1994), pp. 492–511; Martin Shubik, “Antoine Augustin Cournot,” in Eatwell, Milgate, and Newman, op. cit., pp. 117–28.

  18. Joseph Baratta, historian, interview, 6.12.97.

  19. John Nash, “Non-Cooperative Games,” Ph.D. thesis, Princeton University Press (May 1950). Nash’s thesis results were first published as “Equilibrium Points in N-Person Games,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA (1950), pp. 48–49, and later as “Non-Cooperative Games,” Annals of Mathematics (1951), pp. 286–95. See also “Nobel Seminar: The Work of John Nash in Game Theory,” in Les Prix Nobel 1994 (Stockholm: Norstedts Tryckeri, 1995). For a reader-friendly exposition of the Nash equilibrium, see Avinash Dixit and Susan Skeath, Games of Strategy (New York: Norton, 1997).

  20. See, for example, Anthony Storr, Solitude: A Return to the Self (New York: Ballantine Books, 1988); Robert Heilbroner, The Worldly Philosophers (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992); E. T. Bell, Men of Mathematics (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1986); Stuart Hollingdale, Makers of Mathematics (New York: Penguin, 1989); Ray Monk, Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius (New York: Penguin, 1990); John Dawson, Logical Dilemmas: The Life and Work of Kurt Gödel (Wellesley, Mass.: A. K. Peters, 1997); Roger Highfield and Paul Carter, The Private Lives of Albert Einstein (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994); Andrew Hodges, Alan Turing: The Enigma (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1983).

  21. Anthony Storr, The Dynamics of Creation (New York: Atheneum, 1972).

  22. Ibid.

  23. John G. Gunderson, “Personality Disorders,” The New Hanard Guide to Psychiatn (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University, 1988), pp. 343–44.

  24. Ibid.

  25. Ibid.

  26. Havelock Ellis, A Study of British Genius (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1926).

  27. Rogers, interview, 2.16.96.

  28. Zipporah Levinson, interview, Cambridge, 9.11.95.

  29. Irving I. Gottesman, Schizophrenia Genesis: The Origins of Madness (New York: W. H. Freeman, 1991). For a contrary view, which states that cases of schizophrenia have been documented as long as 3,400 years ago, see Ming T. Tsuang, Stephen V. Faraone, and Max Day, “Schizophrenic Disorders,” New Harvard Guide to Psychiatry; op. cit.

  30. Tsuang, Faraone, and Day, op. cit., p. 259.

  31. Gottesman, op. cit.; Tsuang, Faraone, and Day, op. cit.; Richard S. E. Keefe and Philip D. Harvey, Understanding Schizophrenia: A Guide to the New Research on Causes and Treatment (New York: Free Press, 1994); E. Fuller Torrey, Sunning Schizophrenia: A Family Manual (New York: Harper & Row, 1988).

  32. Gottesman, op. cit.

  33. For an excellent summary see Michael R. Trimble, Biological Psychiatry (New York: John Wilev & Sons, 1996), p. 224.

  34. Eugen Bleuler, quoted in Louis A. Sass, Madness and Modernism (New York: Basic Books, 1992), p. 14.

  35. Emil Kraepelin, quoted in ibid., pp. 13–14.

  36. Torrey, op. cit.

  37. Gottesman, op. cit.

  38. Ibid.

  39. See, for example, Tsuang, Faraone, and Day, op. cit.

  40. See, for example, Gottesman, op. cit.

  41. Ibid.

  42. See, for example, Storr, Solitude, op. cit.; Gale Christianson, In the Presence of the Creator (New York: Free Press, 1984); Richard S. Westfall, The Life of Isaac Newton (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1993).

  43. George Winokur and Ming Tsuang, The Natural History of Mania, Depression and Schizophrenia (Washington, D.C.: American Psychiatric Press, 1996), pp. 253–68; Manfred Bleuler, The Schizophrenia Disorders: Long-Term Patient and Family Studies (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1978).

  44. M. Bleuler, op. cit., quoted in Sass, op. cit., p. 14.

  45. Storr, The Dynamics of Creation, op. cit.

  46. See, for example, Gottesman, op. cit. For discussions of differences between manic depressive illness and schizophrenia, see Torrey, op. cit.; Kay Redfield Jamison, Touched with Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament (New York: Free Press, 1993).

  47. Sass, op. cit., prologue.

  48. Emil Kraepelin, Dementia Praecox and Paraphrenia (Huntington, N.Y.: R. E. Krieger, 1971), quoted in Sass, op. cit., pp. 13–14.

  49. Sass, op. cit., p. 4.

  50. Letter from John Nash to Emil Artin, written in Geneva, undated (1959).

  51. Letter from John Nash to Alex Mood, 11.94.

  52. R. Nash, interview, 1.7.96.

  53. Confidential source.

  54. See, for example, Mikhail Gromov, Partial Differential Relations (New York: Springer-Verlag, 1986); Heisuke Hironaka, “On Nash Blowing Up,” Arithmetic and Geometry II (Boston: Birkauser, 1983), pp. 103–11; P. Ordehook, Game Theory and Political Theory: An Introduction (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1986); Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976); John Maynard Smith, Did Darwin Get It Right? (New York: Chapman and Hall, 1989); as well as Math Reviews and Social Science Citation Index, various dates.

  55. Eatwell, Milgate, Newman, op. cit., p. xii.

  56. Ariel Rubinstein, professor of economics, Princeton University and University of Tel Aviv, interview, 10.18.95.

  57. Eatwell, Milgate, Newman, op. cit.

  58. Member, School of Historical Studies, Institute for Advanced Study, interview, 1995.

  59. Freeman Dyson, professor of physics, Institute for Advanced Study, interview, Princeton, 12.5.96.

  60. Enrico Bombieri, professor of mathematics, Institute for Advanced Study, interview, 12.6.96.

  61. See, for example, Winokur and Tsuang, op cit., p. 268.

  62. Kuhn, interview, 10.94.

  Part One: A BEAUTIFUL MIND

  1: Bluefield

  1. John Forbes Nash, Jr., autobiographical essay, Les Prix Nobel 1994, op. cit.

  2. “Nash-Martin,” Appalachian Power & Light Searchlight, vol. 3, no. 9 (September 1924), p. 14.

  3. Ibid.

  4. Martha Nash Legg, interview, Roanoke, 7.31.95.

  5. The history of the Nashes is based on genealogical materials, regional histories, and newspaper clippings supplied by Martha Legg and Richard Nash, including The History of Grayson County; Texas, vol. 2 (Grayson County Frontier Village, 1981) and Graham Landrum and Allan Smith, Grayson Count}: An Illustrated Histon (Fort Worth, Tex.: Historical Publishers). The facts of John Forbes Nash, Sr.’s early life are based on interviews with Martha Nash Legg as well as his obituary.

  6. Obituaries of Martha Nash, Baptist Standard (1944); M. Legg, interview, 8.1.95; R. Nash, interview, San Francisco, 1.7.97.

  7. M. Legg, interview, 7.31.95.

  8. The history of the Martins and th
e facts of Virginia Martin’s early life are based on interviews with Martha Legg as well as obituaries of Emma Martin and Virginia Martin in the Bluefield Daily Telegraph.

  9. Letter from John Forbes Nash, Jr., to Martha Legg, undated (1969).

  10. For a short history of the marriage bar, see Claudia Goldin, “Career and Family: College Women Look to the Past,” Working Paper No. 5188 (Cambridge, Mass.: National Bureau of Economic Research, July 1995).

  11. C. Stuart McGehee, The City of Bluefield: Centennial Histon 1889–1989 (Bluefield Historical Society).

  12. Ibid.; John E. Williams, professor of psychology, Wake Forest University, interview, 8.95.

  13. John Nash, Les Prix Nobel 1994, op. cit.

  14. Williams, interview, 10.24.95; William Lewis, McKinsey & Partners, interview, 10.94.

  15. John Nash, Les Prix Nobel 1994, op. cit.

  16. M. Legg, interview, 8.3.95.

  17. Ibid.

  18. John G. Gunderson, “Personality Disorders,” op. cit., pp. 343–44; also Nikki Erlenmeyer-Kimling, professor of genetics and development, Columbia University, interview, 1.17.98.

  19. M. Legg, interview.

  20. George Thornhill, quoted in William Archer, Bluefield Daily Telegraph, 10.94.

  21. Report cards, various years, supplied by Martha Legg.

  22. John Nash, Les Prix Nobel 1994, op. cit.

  23. M. Legg, interview, 8.1.95.

  24. Eddie Steele, quoted in William Archer, Bluefield Daily Telegraph, 10.13.94.

  25. Donald V. Reynolds, interview, 6.29.97.

  26. Ibid.

  27. Ibid.

  28. M. Legg, interview, 8.2.95.

  29. Ibid.

  30. E. T. Bell, Men of Mathematics, op. cit.; Beth Umberger, quoted in William Archer, Bluefield Daily Telegraph, 10.13.94.