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A Beautiful Mind
(Sylvia Nasar)

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It looks tragic that mental ailments choose to strike persons who are highly talented in mathematics. The history of Nobel laureate John Nash is a case in point.
The author of this book, Sylvia Nasar (winner of the National Book Critics Award) has written a poignant biography of the genius John Nash.
During his childhood and early days Nash did not exhibit much noticeable brilliance. He was aloof, almost autistic. Later he developed interest in chemistry and experimentation.. Then gradually the mathematical genius in him began to flower . By the time he joined Princeton he was extraordinarily precocious. The story of his mathematical genius and his mental illness are entwined together.At Princeton the seeds of his future affliction with schizophrenia seem to be already latent. His fellow students used to consider him an oddball. He was extremely arrogant, haughty and unsocial. But when it came to mathematics there were no two opinions that he was a genius. He was notable for his astonishing originality in solving problems. He invented the the famous game theory for which he was to get the Nobel prize almost five decades later.
But fate would not leave him alone and happy in his ivory tower . He had relations with a nurse and had a son out of wedlock. He began to show homosexual tendencies and had intense relations with a couple of men. He was arrested and lost his job at RAND. At the same time he began to woo another woman, Alicia, whom he married later on and had a son from her.
Soon after the birth of his son his personality started changing .Gradually but inexorably schizophrenia set in. The period of the next twenty five years is a sordid tale . He was forcibly put in mental institutions again and again. The intense suffering both emotional and physical it caused him and his wife was highly tragic. (He even ran away to Europe attempting to renounce his US citizenship ? his forlorn wife trailing him from city to city.) Those who read the story as outsiders can never understand what the husband and wife went through. His wife finally got a divorce. But she was so much in love with him that she put him up as a ? boarder? in her own house ! Nash just used to wander the corridors of Princeton like a lost soul or a ghost for years. It must be the mystery of grace that nobody threw him out. Older colleagues and freshmen just tolerated him and came to accept him. (Even in those utterly dark days mathematics had not deserted him) He was moving like a zombie in this twilight zone till he almost reached seventy years.. It is generally believed that schizophrenia is incurable. But call it grace or luck or miracle, Nash slowly began to move along the path of recovery. His erstwhile brashness, arrogance, uppity receded. He turned more gentle, shy silent.
There was a terrible irony in his life. His second son, after his marriage, who was also showing signs of great brilliance in mathematics (and chess) also fell a victim of dementia and had to be hospitalized continually.
After a gap of nearly fifty years, the importance of the game theory invented by Nash was recognized. He was awarded the Nobel prize in economics in 1994.
Nash remarried his divorced wife , Alicia. There was more contentment and peace The only sour note was that the same illness that had afflicted his son, showed no signs of abatement.
The description of Nash?s life cannot be separated from that of his wife Alicia. The tremendous suffering that she underwent is beyond imagination. Love, fidelity, compassion for her strange unfortunate husband constantly flowed out from her, though tshe did not get them back in equal measure. A very remarkable woman.
The biography is well written and well researched as witnessed by the copious notes at the end of the book.



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