John Nash's life story should not have ended the way it did, on an innocuous, anonymous New Jersey turnpike in 2015. He and his wife, Alicia had been returning from a moment of triumph, returning from Norway, after Nash had been awarded the Abel Prize for outstanding achievements in mathematics. Their taxi driver lost control of his vehicle and struck a guardrail. Both John and Alicia, neither wearing seatbelts, were ejected from the car upon impact. Following his death, obituaries appeared in scientific and popular media throughout the world, but none could match the quality and breadth of the biography by Sylvia Nassar (later turned into a movie starring Russell Crowe, directed by Ron Howard).
In October 1994, several days after the Swedish Academy of Science announced that the
Nobel Prize in Economics would be awarded to “Dr. John Nash, 66, a resident of Princeton,
New Jersey,” a reception was held in his honor at the Princeton University math department coffee lounge. As would be expected, the event was attended by mathematicians, students, a small number of economics professors, a few university administrators and perhaps a token photographer. At the time, the entire sum total of Nash’s formal affiliation with the university was merely having a computer account there.
From accounts the ceremony was somewhat late in starting, and was of no more than a minute or two’s duration. There were no speeches and the guest of honor himself said nothing. As the last champagne glass was drained, an embarrassing silence reigned. Nash stood alone in the middle of the room. No one approached him. He walked over to the refreshment table, and muttered, almost to himself, “The cookies are better than usual today.”
That year Nash was one of three laureates who won the Nobel prize for their contribution
to the arcane discipline of non-cooperative game theory: a series of concepts and mathematical models that attribute absolute rationality to all “players” in strategic situations. Early game theory was set out by von Neumann and Morgenstern (both from Princeton, incidentally) in a monumental work published during World War II. For 25 years it remained a marginal theory in the realm of mathematics. Only in the 1970s did it slowly infiltrate economics and presage one of its greatest intellectual breakthroughs. By the early 1980s, it had become de rigeur, taught routinely n economics departments around the world. Every economics student knew what “Nash’s equilibrium” was -- but no one had actually ever heard of an economist by the name of Nash.
So obscure was he that many assumed that he had long since passed away. In fact, Nash was only in his forties at the time, and his contribution to economics was packed into three papers -- 30 pages -- published before he was 25 (!) Shades of another genius named Albert Einstein who’d laboured in silent obscurity before being illuminated in fame’s spotlight. So central did Nash’s work become to economic theory that under normal circumstances he would have won the Nobel Prize right then and there. But Nash was first and foremost a mathematician. His greatest achievement --solving what was believed to be one of the most complex problems in the sphere of geometry -- predated his 30th birthday.
At 31, however, Nash fell prey to what he describes as “mental disturbances.” For the next 25 years, he moved “from scientific rationality into the delusional thinking characteristic of persons who are psychiatrically diagnosed as schizophrenic or paranoid schizophrenic.” The stereotypical arrogant genius, the eccentric math professor who at 21 offered Einstein a theory postulating the shrinking of the universe and won accolades in ‘Fortune’ magazine as one of the brightest young stars in the field of mathematics, became a sick and lonely man, a ghostly shadow of who we once was, flitting around Princeton’s library looking like a shambling vagrant.
For Sylvia Nasar, the Nobel Prize in Economics was just a routine annual event. As a senior economics reporter for The New York Times with close contacts in the academic world, she was sent to cover the awards ceremony every year. Reporting on the contributions of Nobel Prize laureates, journalists tend to sound ridiculous in their efforts to either appear knowledgeable or convince readers that informed speculation was, in fact, understandable, even practical. Nasar, on the other hand, has always managed to describe their scientific work in a believable, intelligible and intelligent manner. Her report in 1994 was even more special. She was the only journalist who understood that the awarding of the prize that year was not just an academic event to be celebrated but a human event. Several weeks after the winners were announced, Nasar published a long, poignant piece about Nash in ‘The New York Times’.
With poignancy Nasar describes Nash during epochal three phases of his life: as a dashing, young, genius; as a victim of fragmented psyche haunting the idyllic Princeton campus like a ghost; and as a recovered antihero who returns to active research and wins the Nobel Prize. While the Nobel committee articulated the academic world’s appreciation of game theory; Nasar delineated the decision’s profoundly human dimension: the awarding of the prize to a man long since considered by conventional society as “mad.” The success of Nasar’s article prompted the writing of the book.
“A Beautiful Mind” is meticulously researched and movingly told. Nasar scoured the country to collect data, unlocking closeted secrets. She researched psychiatry, devouring biographies of
mathematicians and other geniuses to better understand the complex workings of Nash’s mind. As for the subject himself, Nash himself refused to cooperate, but Nasar was assisted by his wife, Alicia, who despite their divorce in the 1960s, continued to live with him and tend to his needs (they would re-marry in 2001). Alicia’s reasons for collaborating with Nasar were never entirely clear. Perhaps it was exciting to meet a famous journalist, or perhaps she believed that sharing Nash’s tale would be helpful in some way to their son, who had inherited both his father’s mathematical skills and his mental illness.
Why wouldn’t offer Nasar his cooperation? Was it only his fear of embarrassing disclosures? Nash was known as a man of strong principles. Asked to compose a short biography in honor of winning the Nobel Prize -- a piece of writing which is no less fascinating than Nasar’s book -- Nash explained that he deliberately omitted “details of truly personal type”. On several occasions he was overheard to say that the only biography worthy of him was one which concentrated on his scientific and intellectual achievements, but that such a book could not be written because he had not yet completed his work.
Nash’s private life is laid bare in stark detail. Nasar describes his symptoms, his medical
diagnoses, the horrifying treatments he underwent. She hints discreetly about his convoluted private life, sexual preferences, and his tempestuous relationship with a woman with whom he had fathered an “illegitimate” child. Few of Nash’s acquaintances knew about this child before the book was published, so tightly had that door been jammed shut. Her narrative pushes journalistic license to the limit but nowhere does one get the impression that she is twisting facts to suit a narrative that always appears searingly candid.
Not only is this a tale of a man’s work and a baring of his foibles it also raises fundamental questions about the dogged pursuit of truth and the potential for privacy violations thereby -- all the more relevant for the Trumpian age. How far does the public's right to know extend into the less savory aspects of a subject's life?
Nash himself found it difficult to read the book, which he claimed he “borrowed from Alicia.” Does such exposure serve a worthy purpose? Does it help in any way to solve the human riddle, or is it vicarious entertainment for those who are not interested in movie (or reality tv) stars?
Throughout the book Nasar displays a great deal of sympathy for Alicia, even dedicating the book to her. She is portrayed as a tragic victim of circumstances: a beautiful, brilliantly vivacious young woman who spent her entire adult life caring both for a mentally disturbed husband and a no less problematic child. That her often lonely fight is exacerbated because it is fought on the fringes of a condescending and uncaring WASPish Princeton society adds to the drama of the tale, and the book is as much Alicia’s story as it is Nash’s.
Indeed, Nasar seems at best only fitfully sympathetic towards her ostensible subject matter, betraying a certain subjectivity, calling Alicia “Alicia” and Nash - “Nash.” While he has a beautiful mind, the genius does not always display an admirably pure soul.
With regards to the science, anyone looking for more than a simple layman’s explanation of game theory in this book will be disappointed. This is biography, not a technical appraisal. For this distinction, Nasar deserves to be commended.
The story of mad genius fascinates us, maybe because it reinforces the awe we feel when confronted with the intricate mysteries of the human brain and the behaviours it engenders. We are both mesmerized and afraid of exploring this realm, uncomfortable in the knowledge that the borderline between highly original thinking and madness is not at all clearly defined, and Nasar’s book dwells on this. While Nash was ill, he was searching for meaning beyond the everyday, for order and rationality in places where we do not ordinarily look. But Nash’s preoccupation was not any stranger than those who search for codes in the Bible, destiny in the stars, or character traits and hidden meanings in coffee grounds. Maybe it wasn’t even much different than what many scientists do when they look for laws in a sea of seemingly random data. Nash, it seems, was doing just that, but in a much more obsessive, unusual way.
‘A Beautiful Mind’ was a book that was tailor-made for Hollywood. For years the film industry offered Nash extraordinary sums of money for permission to make a movie based on his life. Nash,who lived extremely modestly near the train station at Princeton, together with Alicia and a
very sick son, steadfastedly refused. One thing mattered to him above all others: he remained engaged in the love of his life: research, and neither fame nor money had much appeal. In his
wonderfully incisive way of saying what he meant, candidly, briefly and to the point, Nash
wrote in his bio: “Statistically it would seem improbable that any mathematician or scientist,
at the age of 66, would be able, through continued research efforts, to add much to his or her
previous achievements. However, I have hopes of being able to achieve something of value
through my current studies or with any new ideas that come in the future.”
John Nash's life story, so full of twists and turns, is well related and beautifully told by Nasar. Moreover, it was one that needed to be told. He succeeded in achieving something no less valuable than the Nobel Prize. The power of his ideas and the importance of his work overcame the prize jury's reluctance to award it to someone who followed few conventions, and despite the fact that the academic world had withheld other honors that most likely would have been his if not for his illness. In the final instance, the Nobel committee recognized that mental illness should not detract from a person’s rights in the same way that gender, race or emotional health should not keep us from recognizing intellectual ability and its contributions to society.
This is the message of Nasar’s book, that the human adventure is made up of everyone's story.