John Nash Nobel laureate biography. Insanely ingenious, ingeniously insane

Nobel laureate and just a very strong-willed personality, John Nash is a scientist who formulated the foundations of a method that has had a significant impact on modern world economy. He received his main award for his work on game theory, which he published at the age of 21. But Nash's genius was side by side with the symptoms of schizophrenia, and a life full of sharp turns, unfortunately, did not include a peaceful death in the circle of relatives.

The last chapter in the biography

Three years ago, on May 23, 2015, in the city of Monroe (Gloucester County, US state of New Jersey) there was a car accident with human casualties. The taxi driver, having entered the oncoming lane for overtaking, lost control, a collision occurred.

The person responsible for the accident was taken to the hospital. He survived with only minor injuries. But two passengers who did not buckle up were thrown out of the cabin. Medics who arrived at the scene of a traffic accident, ascertained the death of both men and women.

Mathematician John Nash and his wife Alicia were killed. The Nobel laureate died at the age of 87, and his wife died at the age of 82. Such was the death of a brilliant scientist, whose life was full of dramatic turns.

From hate to life's work

John Forbes Nash Jr. was born on June 13, 1928 in Bluefield, West Virginia. His father was an electrical engineer, and his mother, who had worked as a school teacher for 10 years before her marriage, was now a housewife. The Nash family was strictly Protestant.

Little John was an ordinary kid, showing no signs of winning the Nobel Prize in Economics in a couple of decades. The boy preferred outdoor games to lessons, studied averagely, did not like the exact sciences, and especially mathematics. The teacher literally instilled in his student an aversion to the subject being studied.

At the age of 14, John Nash got his hands on Math Makers by Eric T. Bell, a mathematician and science fiction author. The teenager was incredibly fond of reading. After reading the book, he was able to prove Fermat's theorem on his own. Nash would later write about this interesting fact in his autobiography.

After school, the young man entered the Polytechnic Institute (now it is a private educational institution- Carnegie Mellon University). There he did not consider mathematics as his vocation at all, but initially studied chemistry and international economics. Only after John Nash decided to take up mathematics, since she was closest to him.

In 1947, nineteen-year-old Nash Jr. graduated from the university with a bachelor's degree and a master's degree at the same time. The letter of recommendation from his supervisor spoke for itself. Richard Duffin wrote that "John Nash is a mathematical genius."

"He's a math genius"

After graduating from the Carnegie Institute, the young scientist entered Princeton University. It was there that he first heard information about game theory that struck his imagination. In his twenties, he formulated the foundations of a method that later played an important role in the world economy.

In 1949, Nash published his dissertation on game theory. John Nash found his life's work. Five years later, it is for this work that he will receive his most important award - the Nobel Prize. Officially, the award was given "for fundamental analysis of equilibrium in game theory".

During 1950-1953, the scientist published four more works in the field of zero-sum games. All of them became revolutionary. He discovered the possibility of a state of equilibrium, with all parties using a strategy that leads to equilibrium. This result was later called the Nash equilibrium.

In 1951, John Nash began work at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (better known as MIT). During this time, he wrote several works on the theory of varieties and algebraic geometry, which were highly appreciated by his contemporaries. He is the author of The Bidding Problem and Non-Cooperative Games.

Colleagues recognized the uniqueness of John Nash's knowledge, but the team did not like him. The young scientist was a genius, but he seemed to others closed, uncommunicative, gloomy, selfish and an arrogant person. But these are not his character traits by nature, but signs of an approaching illness.

Another reason for the alienation of colleagues was that in his work it was proved mathematical methods fidelity to the theory of Karl Marx. Here we are talking on the theory of surplus value. But these were the times of the “witch hunt”, when such communist sentiments threatened not only with the loss of a job, but also with criminal prosecution.

At the same time, John Nash had problems in his personal life, but more on that below.

A bit about game theory

Not all readers understand mathematical theories, so a brief explanation will not hurt. Game theory is a method of studying optimal strategies in processes involving two or more parties fighting for the realization of their interests. This theory allows you to choose best strategy, that is, the one that will lead to a win.

Methods for studying strategies in games are most often used in economics, somewhat less often in sociology, ethics, psychology, political science, jurisprudence and other sciences. Since the 1970s, it has also been adopted by biologists who have studied animal behavior and the theory of evolution.

Of exceptional importance is the theory of John Nash for cybernetics, artificial intelligence and modern technology. During and after World War II, the theory was of interest to the military, who saw it as a way to explore strategic decisions.

Personal life of an outstanding scientist

In 1951, John was abandoned by his girlfriend, nurse Eleanor Stier (according to another version - Styer, Stier). It is unknown why this happened. There is an opinion that the girl could not stand the arrogant attitude of her lover (it soon turned out that he was sick), and someone says that Eleanor was frightened of persecution by the authorities for Nash's "communist" studies.

Whatever was real reason gap, it is only known that Steer was expecting a baby at that time. John Nash did not give his son his last name. In the future, he did not financially support the mother of John David Steyer (Stayer).

The heroine of the new novel by John Forbes Nash Jr. is student Alicia Lard. The girl was not stopped by the strangeness of the scientist, and already in 1957 they officially became spouses. Life got better. Alicia was expecting her first child, and popular science publications called John Nash Jr. " rising star American Science. But the strangeness in the behavior of the man grew.

Voices in the head and "secret information"

The scientist heard voices that no one else heard, he began to mention every now and then about some kind of "conspiracy against America" ​​and "secret information." The mathematician began to show signs of mental disorder. Alicia, a 26-year-old woman on recent months pregnancy, sought to help her husband overcome schizophrenia, but John's behavior was very difficult to control.

In 1959, the research assistant was fired. Everything went downhill. Nash was hospitalized in a clinic where he was injected with potent drugs for almost two months. But the pharmacological effects only aggravated John Nash's condition.

Phantom from Princeton

Then Nash decided to go to Europe. Alicia left her son to relatives, going after her husband. John asked for political asylum in several European countries, but was refused everywhere, as the Europeans were worried about his state of health, and the US authorities also put pressure on him. They didn't want genius to leave their sphere of influence.

Nash was arrested and forcibly sent to America. There, the scientist's condition worsened once again. His notes resembled incoherent delirium, not studies of a mathematical genius. Yesterday's colleagues listened to John's ideas only out of compassion.

In 1961, he was again admitted to a psychiatric clinic. After being discharged from the hospital, Nash again went to Europe, this time Alicia stayed at home. The scientist's wife divorced. She began to raise their common son alone. By the way, he inherited a talent for mathematics and schizophrenia from his father.

For a while, Nash returned to a (relatively) normal life, but a new deterioration followed. In the early seventies, only a man in old clothes who sometimes could not find a place to sleep. Saved him ex-wife. Alicia took John back and helped him, and in 2011 they remarried.

For many years, students at Princeton University called the future Nobel laureate John Nash the Phantom. He got such a nickname, because more than once he suddenly appeared in the offices and wrote down formulas on the board, the meaning of which was clear only to him alone.

Thoughts of a brilliant mathematician

In the early eighties, John Nash as a promising scientist began to be forgotten, but it was then that something happened that no one expected. His notes and speech again became meaningful, and the formulas became not the delirium of a mentally ill person, but the thoughts of a brilliant mathematician. The doctors couldn't explain it, but Nash won the battle against schizophrenia. He simply began to ignore the voices in his head, and they gradually disappeared.

John Nash quickly returned to the level of science he had before his illness. In 1994, the scientist was awarded Nobel Prize. She was awarded a work created in 1949. By the way, Nash was not allowed to read the Nobel lecture. This interesting fact was explained by the organizers. They were just afraid that Nash's health condition would affect the performance and something would go wrong.

"Beautiful mind" S. Nazar

Four years after Nash was awarded the Nobel Prize, Sylvia Nazar wrote a biography of the scientist. The work was titled A Beautiful Mind: The Life of Mathematical Genius and Nobel Laureate John Nash. The book sold well and attracted many Hollywood producers.

The film "A Beautiful Mind"

In 2001, a film based on the book by Sylvia Nazar was released. John Nash was played by Russell Crowe. With a budget of $58 million, the picture grossed $313 million at the box office. It was a resounding success. In addition, A Beautiful Mind won four Oscars. Of course, the cinematic story was different from the real one, but this did not prevent Nash from becoming popular not only in scientific circles, but also among the general public. This film is worth watching not only for those who are interested in science and the personality of this scientist, but also for developmental purposes.

Nobel and Abel Prizes

Interesting fact: John Nash became the first person in the world of science who simultaneously holds both the Nobel Prize and the Abel Prize. Abelevskaya was established by the Norwegian government as an analogue of the Prize. Nobel for mathematicians. This triumph was an excellent final step in Nash's scientific career.

Some of Nash's sayings

Biography of John Nash - interesting story some of his sayings will help to understand it completely. For example, about the future:

I don't know what future awaits me. Even if I don't have much left. Of course, in general, the future is infinite, unless something bad happens or a miracle happens.

About tasks and solutions:

The problem is solved at the moment when it is set.

Touching words about love, which, perhaps, became John's confession to his wife Alicia:

I'm only here today because of you. You are the only reason for my presence. You are all my reasons.

A short dialogue about science, love and faith:

- Tell me, is the Universe big? - Infinite... - How do you know? - All the data point to it. - But it's not proven, you haven't seen it yourself? Why are you sure? - I'm not sure, I believe. - With love in the same way ...

About mathematics as an art and his attitude towards biologists:

Mathematics is a very specific science, it is a special kind of art, no matter what you are told around, especially those who are engaged in biology.

About questions and answers, the nature of genius:

Geniuses know the answer before they know the question.

The death of the great mathematician was a tragedy for science. During his long, but still prematurely ended life, he managed to do a lot. Perhaps, if not for the disease, Nash was able to formulate even more important scientific theories, laws, and develop several additional methods. But there is also a possibility that it was precisely because of such a disastrous predisposition to schizophrenia that he became a mathematical genius. It's a fine line. One can only hope that the history of modernity will recognize more than one equally talented scientist, but with a calmer fate.

On May 23, in New Jersey, USA, the outstanding American mathematician John Forbes Nash, winner of the 1994 Nobel Prize in Economics, who became the prototype of the protagonist of the film A Beautiful Mind, died in a car accident. The 86-year-old man, along with his 82-year-old wife Alicia, was returning home by taxi from the airport, where he had flown from Norway, where he was awarded the Abel Prize last Tuesday. The driver lost control, and the car crashed into a fence, after which it collided with another car. Elderly spouses were thrown out of the car, they died on the spot from their injuries. The taxi driver was hospitalized with minor injuries pending no charges.

Next are waiting for you Interesting Facts about the film "A Beautiful Mind", which show the similarities and differences between the hero of the film and the mathematician John Nash.

1. Despite the fact that the picture is a kind of biography of the life of John Nash, some details of the life of the great mathematician were deliberately omitted: 1) John was married several times; 2) in his youth, John was bisexual - had close relationships with both women and men; 3) John had an illegitimate child.

2. The Harvard scenes were actually filmed at Manhattan College.

3. Two applicant producers fought for the right to film the life of John Nash. Brian Grazer won the fight, and Scott Rudin was the loser.

4. John Nash could have been played by Tom Cruise.

5. The real John and Alicia Nash divorced during the peak of his illness, but Alicia, out of pity, let him live in their house. And during the filming of "A Beautiful Mind" they got married again.

6. John Nash really received the Nobel Prize, but not alone, but together with colleagues - Reinhard Selten and the Hungarian Janos Harsanyi. Moreover, another Hungarian, Janos Newman, became the founder of Game Theory. Nash distinguished himself by being able to apply the provisions of "game theory" in the business world.

7. In the scene when John Nash is kidnapped by "Russian spies", among the students watching this, you can see the daughter of director Ron Howard and famous actress- Bryce Dallas Howard.

8. John Nash (played by Russell Crowe in the film) was brought on set to help the actors play their roles more authentically. Russell Crowe later admitted that he was fascinated by John's hand movements and tried to do the same during filming.

9. Nash's son subsequently also developed schizophrenia.

10. When Nash first sees Parker, he refers to him as "big brother" (an allusion to Orwell's 1984). Another reference to Orwell comes later, when we see the number on the door of Nash's office - 101.

11. The Mathematics Curator of the film was Dave Bayer, a professor at Barnard College - it was with his hand that Russell Crowe “brings out” tricky formulas on the board. "Wise formulas" upon closer examination are just a meaningless set of Greek letters, arrows and mathematical signs. Apparently, the professor was paid a salary in vain.

12. Salma Hayek was invited to play the role of Alicia Lard.

13. The manuscript that young John Nash shows to his curator, Professor Helinger, is a genuine copy of an article published in the journal Econometrica under the heading "The problem of making a deal."

14. In the 1994 Nobel Prize portion of the film, Nash talks about taking a new type of antipsychotic, but in reality, John Nash stopped taking them back in 1970, and his remission was not related to taking neuroleptics.

15. Screenwriter Akiva Goldsman had considerable experience in dealing with mentally ill people: in his time as a doctor, he personally developed methods for restoring the mental health of children and adults.

16. The director's place was originally assigned to Robert Redford, but he was not satisfied with the filming schedule.

17. In the film, Jennifer Connelly plays Russell Crowe's wife. In real life, her husband is Paul Bettany, who plays Crowe's friend.

18. The bed scene between the characters Crowe and Connelly was cut from the final version of the picture.

19. Filming began the day after the Oscars, where Russell received the award for best actor for "Gladiator"

In simple words

June 13 turned 85 years since birth John Forbes Nash Jr.- one of the outstanding mathematicians, Nobel Prize winner, founder of game theory, man tragic fate...
(UPD. This year 86 )
John Forbes Nash, November 2006

Wikipedia
(The Wikipedia article is very large and detailed. And at times it makes the blood run cold... Well, the movie "A Beautiful Mind", I think, does not need to be advertised...)
John Forbes Nash, Jr. (born June 13, 1928, Bluefield, West Virginia)- American mathematician working in the field of game theory and differential geometry. 1994 Nobel Prize in Economics for his analysis of equilibrium in the theory of cooperative games(together with Reinhard Selten and John Harsani). Known general public mostly based on Ron Howard's biographical drama A Beautiful Mind about his mathematical genius and struggle with schizophrenia.

UPD 05/23/2015
Life dates:
(June 13, 1928, Bluefield, West Virginia - May 23, 2015, New Jersey)

Biography
John Nash was born June 13, 1928 in Bluefield, West Virginia to a strict Protestant family. His father worked as an engineer at Appalachian Electric Power, and his mother worked as a school teacher for 10 years before marriage. I studied average at school, but I didn’t like mathematics at all - at school it was taught boringly. When Nash was 14 years old, Eric T. Bell's The Makers of Mathematics fell into his hands. “After reading this book, I was able to prove Fermat's little theorem on my own, without outside help,” Nash writes in his autobiography. So his mathematical genius declared itself. But that was only the beginning.

Studies
After school, he studied at the Carnegie Polytechnic Institute (now the private Carnegie Mellon University), where Nash tried to study chemistry, took a course in international economics, and then finally established himself in the decision to do mathematics. In 1947, after graduating from the institute with two diplomas - a bachelor's and a master's degree - he entered Princeton University. Nash Institute professor Richard Duffin provided him with one of the most concise letters of recommendation. It contained a single line: "This man is a genius" (Eng. This man is a genius).

Works
At Princeton, John Nash heard about game theory, then only introduced by John von Neumann and Oscar Morgenstern. Game theory captured his imagination, so much so that at the age of 20, John Nash managed to create the foundations of the scientific method, which played a huge role in the development of the world economy. In 1949, the 21-year-old scientist wrote a dissertation on game theory. Forty-five years later, he received the Nobel Prize in Economics for this work. Nash's contribution was described as "for his fundamental analysis of equilibrium in the theory of non-cooperative games."

Neumann and Morgenstern were engaged in so-called zero-sum games, in which the gain of one side is equal to the loss of the other. Between 1950 and 1953, Nash published four, without exaggeration, revolutionary papers in which he provided an in-depth analysis of non-zero-sum games - a class of games in which the sum of winning participants is not equal to the sum of losses of losing participants. An example of such a game would be negotiations on wage increases between the trade union and the management of the company. This situation can end either in a long strike in which both sides suffer, or in reaching a mutually beneficial agreement. Nash saw the new face of competition by simulating what came to be known as the "Nash equilibrium" or "non-cooperative equilibrium" in which both sides use an ideal strategy to create a stable equilibrium. It is beneficial for the players to maintain this balance, since any change will only worsen their situation.

In 1951, John Nash began working at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge. There he wrote a number of articles on real algebraic geometry and the theory of Riemannian manifolds, which were highly appreciated by his contemporaries. But John's colleagues avoided - his work mathematically substantiated the theory of surplus value of Karl Marx, which was then considered heretical in the USA during the "witch hunt". Outcast John is left even by his girlfriend, nurse Eleanor Steer, who was expecting a child from him. After becoming a father, he refused to give his name to the child to be entered on the birth certificate, and also to provide any financial support to his mother in order to protect them from persecution by the McCarthy commission.

Nash has to leave MIT, although he was a professor there until 1959, and he leaves for California to work for the RAND corporation, engaged in analytical and strategic development for the US government, which employed leading American scientists. There, again through his research in game theory, Nash became one of the leading cold war. Although the RAND Corporation is known as a haven for dissidents in opposition to Washington, even there John did not get along. In 1954, he was fired after the police arrested him for indecent behavior - changing clothes in the men's room on the beach in Santa Monica.

Disease
Soon John Nash met a student, Colombian beauty Alicia Lard, and in 1957 they got married. In July 1958, Fortune magazine named Nash America's Rising Star in "New Mathematics". Soon Nash's wife became pregnant, but this coincided with Nash's illness - he developed symptoms of schizophrenia. At this time, John was 30 years old, and Alicia - 26. Alicia tried to hide everything that was happening from friends and colleagues, wanting to save Nash's career. The deterioration of her husband's condition depressed Alicia more and more. In 1959 he lost his job. Some time later, Nash was forcibly admitted to a private psychiatric clinic in the suburbs of Boston, McLean Hospital, where he was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and subjected to psychopharmacological treatment. Nash's lawyer managed to secure his release from the hospital after 50 days. After being discharged, Nash decided to leave for Europe. Alicia left her newborn son with her mother and followed her husband. Nash tried to obtain political refugee status in France, Switzerland and the GDR and renounce American citizenship. However, under pressure from the US State Department, these countries denied Nash asylum. In addition, the actions of Nash were monitored by the American naval attaché, who blocked his appeals to embassies. different countries. Finally, the US authorities managed to achieve the return of Nash - he was arrested by the French police and deported to the United States. Upon their return, they settled in Princeton, where Alicia found work. But Nash's illness progressed: he was constantly afraid of something, spoke of himself in the third person, wrote meaningless postcards, called former colleagues. They patiently listened to his endless discussions about numerology and the state of political affairs in the world.

In January 1961, a completely depressed Alicia, John's mother, and his sister Martha made the difficult decision to admit John to Trenton State Hospital in New Jersey, where John underwent insulin therapy, a harsh and risky treatment, 5 days a week for two and a half months. After his release, Nash's colleagues from Princeton decided to help him by offering him a job as a researcher, but John again went to Europe, but this time alone. He sent only cryptic letters home. In 1962, after three years Confusion, Alicia divorced John. With the support of her mother, she raised her son by herself. Subsequently, he also developed schizophrenia.

Despite Nash's divorce from Alicia, fellow mathematicians continued to help Nash - they gave him a job at the university and arranged a meeting with a psychiatrist who prescribed antipsychotic medication. Nash's condition improved and he began to spend time with Alicia and his first son, John David. “It was a very encouraging time,” recalls John's sister Martha. - It was quite a long period. But then everything started to change.” John stopped taking his medications, fearing that they might interfere with mental activity, and the symptoms of schizophrenia reappeared.

In 1970, Alicia Nash, being sure that she had made a mistake by betraying her husband, accepted him again, now as a pensioner, and this may have saved the scientist from a state of homelessness. In later years, Nash continued to go to Princeton, writing strange formulas on blackboards. Princeton students nicknamed him "The Phantom". Then, in the 1980s, Nash became noticeably better - his symptoms subsided and he became more involved in surrounding life. The disease, to the surprise of the doctors, began to recede. In fact, Nash began to learn to ignore her and took up mathematics again. “Now I think quite rationally, like any scientist,” Nash writes in his autobiography. “I won’t say that it gives me the joy that anyone who recovers from a physical illness experiences. Rational thinking limits man's ideas about his connection with the cosmos.

Confession
On October 11, 1994, at the age of 66, John Nash received the Nobel Prize for his work on game theory.

However, he was deprived of the opportunity to give the traditional Nobel lecture at Stockholm University, as the organizers feared for his condition. Instead, a seminar was organized (with the participation of the laureate) at which his contribution to game theory was discussed. After that, John Nash was still invited to give a lecture at another university - Uppsala. According to Krister Kiselman, professor at the Mathematical Institute of the University of Uppsala, who invited him, the lecture was devoted to cosmology.

In 2001, 38 years after their divorce, John and Alicia remarried. Nash has returned to his office at Princeton, where he continues to study mathematics.

In 2008, John Nash gave a talk on "Ideal Money and Asymptotically Ideal Money" at international conference Game Theory and Management at the Graduate School of Management of St. Petersburg state university.

Article on Habrahabr:
Letter from John Nash to the NSA, 1955
Agency national security The United States has declassified the amazing letters that the famous mathematician John Nash sent them in 1955.
Read on habrahabr.ru
And here is a direct link to a pdf file with these letters: Nash Letters to the NSA

Nash equilibrium
Nash equilibrium(eng. Nash equilibrium) is named after John Forbes Nash - this is the name in game theory of the type of decisions of the game of two or more players, in which no participant can increase the payoff by changing his decision unilaterally, when other participants do not change their decisions. Such a set of strategies chosen by the participants and their payoffs is called the Nash equilibrium.

The concept of Nash equilibrium (NE) was not first used by Nash; Antoine Auguste Cournot showed how to find what we call the Nash equilibrium in the Cournot game. Accordingly, some authors call it the Nash-Cournot equilibrium. However, Nash was the first to show in his dissertation on non-cooperative games in 1950 that such equilibria must exist for all finite games with any number of players. Prior to Nash, this was only proven for 2-player zero-sum games by John von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern (1947).

The Prisoner's Dilemma
I want to demonstrate the definition of Nash equilibrium using the classic problem of game theory "Prisoner's Dilemma". Here's what Wikipedia says about her.
The Prisoner's Dilemma(eng. Prisoner's dilemma) - fundamental problem in game theory, according to which players will not always cooperate with each other, even if it is in their interests. It is assumed that the player ("prisoner") maximizes his own payoff, not caring about the benefit of others.

In the Prisoner's Dilemma, betrayal strictly dominates cooperation, so the only possible equilibrium is betrayal by both participants. Simply put, it doesn't matter what the other player does, everyone wins more if they betray. Since it is better to betray than to cooperate in any situation, all rational players will choose to betray.

Behaving individually rationally, together the participants come to an irrational solution: if both betray, they will receive a smaller total gain than if they cooperated (the only equilibrium in this game does not lead to a Pareto-optimal solution). Therein lies the dilemma.

The classic formulation of the prisoner's dilemma is:

Two criminals, A and B, were caught at about the same time on similar crimes. There is reason to believe that they acted in collusion, and the police, having isolated them from each other, offer them the same deal: if one testifies against the other, and he remains silent, then the first is released for helping the investigation, and the second receives the maximum term imprisonment (10 years). If both are silent, their act passes under a lighter article, and each of them is sentenced to 0.5 years. If both testify against each other, they receive a minimum sentence (2 years each). Each prisoner chooses whether to remain silent or testify against the other. However, neither of them knows exactly what the other will do. What will happen?

The game can be represented as the following table:


The dilemma arises if we assume that both care only about minimizing their own terms of imprisonment.

Imagine the reasoning of one of the prisoners. If the partner is silent, then it is better to betray him and go free (otherwise - six months in prison). If a partner testifies, then it is better to testify against him too in order to get 2 years (otherwise - 10 years). The "witness" strategy strictly dominates the "keep quiet" strategy. Similarly, another prisoner comes to the same conclusion.

From the point of view of the group (these two prisoners), it is best to cooperate with each other, remain silent and receive six months, as this will reduce the total sentence. Any other solution will be less profitable. This demonstrates very clearly that in a non-zero sum game, the Pareto optimum can be the opposite of the Nash equilibrium.

Here is a link to LiveJournal, where a large biographical post is dedicated to Nash - you can find many photos there. And those same letters to the NSA are also there: fandorin1001.livejournal.com/1975418.html
True, there we are talking not only about Nash, but also about the movie "A Beautiful Mind" ...

Video. Meeting with John Forbes Nash

He rose to prominence with Ron Howard's A Beautiful Mind, a biopic about Nash's math genius and his struggle to overcome paranoid schizophrenia.

John Forbes Nash Jr. was born on June 13, 1928 in Bluefield, West Virginia (Bluefield, West Virginia, U.S.). He grew up in a strict Protestant family. His mother worked as a school teacher for 10 years before marriage, his father was an engineer. AT school years Nash did not stand out from other students, and generally treated mathematics with coolness, but only because the teachers presented it very boringly. At the age of 14, he became interested in the book by Eric T. Bell (Eric T. Bell) "Creators of Mathematics", mastered it without the help of adults and proved Fermat's little theorem. So he awakened his mathematical genius.

At the Carnegie Institute of Technology, John tried to focus on chemistry and economics, after which he made sure that mathematics was truly his element. Leaving university with a bachelor's and master's degree in 1948, he went to Princeton University (Princeton University), where one of his teachers, Richard Duffin, while working on a letter of recommendation for Nash, fit everything into one precise phrase: "This man is a genius!"

It was at Princeton that John learned about game theory, which captured his imagination, and in his 20s was able to develop the foundations of the scientific method, which had a special impact on the development of the world economy. In 1949, he submitted a dissertation on game theory to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics 40 years later. Between 1950 and 1953, John Nash published four deep analyzes of non-zero-sum games. Subsequently, the situation he modeled was called the "Nash equilibrium" (or "non-cooperative equilibrium"), in which the winners and losers use an ideal strategy that leads to the creation of a stable equilibrium.

In 1951, Nash went to work at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge (Cambridge), where he wrote a series of papers on real algebraic geometry, and also touched on the theory of Riemannian manifolds. However, his work mathematically substantiated the theory of surplus value of Karl Marx (Karl Marx), because of which John became an outcast. He was shunned by his colleagues and abandoned by his girlfriend, nurse Eleanor Stier, who bore him a son, John David Stier.

As a result, Nash left MIT and moved to California (California), where he became one of the leading specialists of the RAND company, "a haven for dissidents." And yet he lost this job, too, after the police arrested the mathematician in 1954 "for obscene behavior."

John Nash met student Alicia Lopez-Harrison de Lardé at MIT and they married in 1957. Soon his 26-year-old wife became pregnant, but this joyful event was overshadowed by the first symptoms of schizophrenia in 30-year-old Nash. The oppressed Alicia, trying to save her husband's career, hid everything that was happening in the family, but in 1959 Nash still lost his job. Mathematics was forcibly placed in private mental asylum where "paranoid schizophrenia" was defined and psychopharmacological treatment was used.

After 50 days of getting out of the psychiatric hospital by his lawyer, John left for Europe. Alicia left her son to her mother - and followed her husband. The couple could not find asylum in other countries, because. they were followed everywhere by the US State Department and the US Naval Attache. After the French police detained and extradited John to the authorities, he was deported to the United States.

Best of the day

His illness, meanwhile, did not stand still. Nash spoke of himself in the third person, was overwhelmed by unfounded fears, called former colleagues and talked endlessly about numerology and politics. In January 1961, after a difficult decision by his relatives, the mathematician was again in the hospital, where he underwent a dangerous course of insulin therapy. After treatment, he left for Europe for the second time, but without Alicia. In 1962, his wife divorced him; Nash's son subsequently also developed schizophrenia.

Fellow mathematicians supported John. He got a job at the university and was on antipsychotic medication. His illness subsided for a while, but soon the man on the mend was afraid that medical preparations harm his mental activity. Schizophrenia is back. Yet in 1970, guilt-ridden Alicia accepted Nash back, which may have saved him from homelessness.

His students nicknamed him "The Phantom", writing strange formulas on blackboards all the time. Finally, in the 1980s, the disease, to the surprise of doctors, began to recede again. Nash was still doing his favorite mathematics, this time "reasonable", and said that sound thinking still does not connect man so closely with the cosmos.

In 2001, John and Alicia re-tied the knot.

Christina Tuchina

The film industry often works wonders these days. How interesting personalities and fate was revealed to the world through cinema! It suffices to cite two recent films as examples, Operation Argo, about Tony Mendez's perilous 1979 job in Iran, and Wave Breakers, the story of intrepid young surfer Jay Moriarty. Another person who deserves attention is John Forbes Nash, an American mathematician who became world famous not only among colleagues and students of mathematical departments thanks to the film A Beautiful Mind, released in 2001.

John Nash Jr. was born June 14, 1928 in Bluefield, West Virginia. His mother was a teacher of English language and his father is an electrical engineer. Even as a teenager, he showed his high mental capacity spending a lot of time reading books and experimenting. Already at the age of 14, John Nash independently developed a proof of Fermat's little theorem. Nevertheless, at school, Nash studied averagely, and did not show much love for mathematics, since at school she was taught very boringly.

In 1945, Nash entered Carnegie Polytechnic Institute in Pittsburgh. He entered the institute with the goal of following in the footsteps of his father and becoming an engineer, but instead he was fascinated by mathematics and in particular by topics such as the theory of relativity, number theory, Diophantine equations quantum mechanics. In addition, at the institute, Nash learned about the "negotiation problem" and became interested in it.

In 1948, Nash entered Princeton University, where he worked on the theory of equilibrium. In 1950, while receiving his Ph.D., he defended his dissertation on non-cooperative games. 44 years later, the main points of the dissertation brought Nash the Nobel Prize in Economics (1944). Nash's research on this issue also resulted in three papers published in 1950 and 1953.

During the summer of 1950, as well as in 1952 and 1954, Nash worked for the RAND Corporation in California. In 1950-1951, his main activity was the calculus courses taught at Princeton, and in 1951-1952 Nash worked as a research assistant at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, where he was disliked by colleagues, but appreciated his brilliant mathematical abilities.

In Massachusetts, John Nash met a student from El Salvador, Alicia Lard, whom he later married in 1957. Their son, John Charles Martin, was born in 1959. Nash had another child with Eleanor Steer, born in 1953, but wanted nothing to do with the family. He returned to her only once during a long period of manifestation of the disease in the second half of the 1960s.

Alicia and John separated in 1963, but Alicia, due to illness ex-husband returned to him in 1970. Then for a long time they were just roommates under the same roof, until in 1994, the year of receiving the Nobel Prize, the couple resumed their relationship and got married again in 2001. Throughout Nash's life and illness, Alicia has always supported him and insisted on his treatment.

In 1958, Nash showed the first signs of mental illness, and was soon diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, which had previously been with his father. One of its manifestations was that it seemed to Nash that messages sometimes appeared in the newspapers, encrypted for us by aliens, which only he could decipher. After some time in Paris and Geneva, in 1960 he returned to Princeton, where he wandered through mental asylums until 1970. However, in 1978 he was awarded the John von Neumann Prize for "Equilibrium analysis in the theory of cooperative games". During the entire period of his illness, fellow mathematicians supported him in every possible way: they helped with work, in treatment and in household chores.

Every year, Nash's psychological condition gradually improved, and in the 1990s he could be considered almost recovered. By 1996, together with the first, 23 scientific work as well as his autobiography. Remarkably, there is still no medical explanation for how Nash stopped suffering from an incurable disease, although there is speculation that he learned to cope with it through concentration on mathematics.

In 1994, Nash was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics for his work on game theory. Due to health reasons, he did not get a chance to give the Nobel lecture at Stockholm University, but a seminar was organized with his participation. In addition, he was invited to lecture on cosmology at Uppsala University.

In 2008, Nash spoke at the international conference "Game theory and management" at the Graduate School of Management of St. Petersburg State University.

Nash currently lives with Alicia near Princeton. He writes about himself as follows: “Now I think quite sensibly, like any scientist. I won’t say that this makes me happy, which every convalescent person experiences, from a physical illness. Sound thinking limits a person’s ideas about his connection with the cosmos.”

Now Nash is not expected to make grandiose discoveries, but this does not matter, since his contribution to the development modern science truly great: his ideas are widely used both in further theorizing and in practice in various fields: economics, mathematics, sociology, and even genetics. However, on top of everything else, one of his major achievements is his victory over an incurable disease, which only a few out of millions are capable of.

Used sources and literature:

1. John Nash. Biography - http://biographera.net/biography.php?id=361
2. Leaders in history. John Nash - http://www.gilbo.ru/index.php?page=persons&art=1861
3. Nash, John Forbes A4%D0%BE%D1%80%D0%B1%D1%81

Photos taken from the resource Google Pictures