A Beautiful mind

"Because the ideas I had about supernatural beings came to me the same way my mathematical ideas did," came the answer. "So I took them seriously."

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 of a beautiful woman and the loyalty of the mathematics community -- emerged after decades of ghostlike existence to win a Nobel Prize and world acclaim. The inspiration for a major motion picture, Sylvia Nasar's award-winning biography is a drama about the mystery of the human mind, triumph over incredible adversity, and the healing power of love.

But whereas Dostoyevsky's character commits a murder, Nash's main offense is merely to be an arrogant and boorish lout, forever trying to show off to his fellow students at Princeton. When he is later struck down by mental illness after achieving so much so young, we can't help feeling there is an element of hubris involved.

Nash also fits into the popular paradigm of the lop-sided genius, the person of incredible talents who can't deal with the simpler aspects of daily life. As in the case of the notoriously absent-minded Albert Einstein -- whom Nash meets in the book -- or the equally eccentric Isaac Newton, we somehow feel reassured that these supreme geniuses have their weaknesses. For all these reasons, this is a story that resonates on a mythic and psychological level. We keep rooting for Nash, but also secretly look forward to him tripping up. This reflects the ambivalent attitude to the sciences that most people have -- we are both intrigued by new discoveries but afraid of their ramifications.

Around the age of 30, Nash's quest to find greater meaning in the Universe sparked off his insanity as he started to discern complex codes implanted by extra-terrestrials in the random occurrence of certain letters of the alphabet in daily life. But, although this is essentially a tragedy of a brilliant mind struck down by schizophrenia, it is nevertheless one with a happy ending. After paying his dues for his genius and arrogance, Nash gradually recovers and receives his apotheosis in the 1994 Nobel Prize for economics.

Movies and books are radically different media, so don't expect this to read like the recent Oscar-winning movie that it inspired. The expansiveness of the written word allows for much more detail to emerge as well as countless digressions and forays into the worlds of science and mathematics that the movie had no space for. So, if you saw the movie and loved it, this biography still has plenty to offer.

What is so important about this work is that Nasar is equally skilled in communicating the extent of Nash's illness and the significance of his battle against it as she is in communicating the extent of his mathematical genius. She does not simply examine Nash, but also the effect that Nash had on those around him, whether positive or negative. Although it is blatantly obvious that Nash is a hero of Nasar's, she is certainly not afraid to criticise specific actions or attitudes of his when she feels that such criticism is justified. Perhaps the most potent examples of this occur when Nash's personal life is described in a large amount of detail. This produces a tremendously balanced, no-holds-barred, biography.

The fact that this book shares its title with Ron Howard's latest film is misleading to some extent, since this book devles much deeper than a two-hour film ever could. So, even if you have seen the film, as I had, you will be shocked and captivated by new revelations about Nash, and come away with a much more complete picture of the man. The sheer volume of the footnotes at the end of the book is a testament both to its accuracy and the effort that Nasar invested in it.

This is a book that like the man whose biography it is, may confuse the reader such as myself while reading it, but believe me it is worth the effort of reading for its honesty about a genius and his life, what it takes to become a world class mathematic. Sylvia Nasar put a tremendous amount of research in this book as evidenced by the contents and the index.

I believe Dr. Nash could have been a healthier person with a little training in emotional intelligent, but he did not have that advantage and comes out a snob and a very hard person to know. He was born in West Virginia and went on to graduate from Princeton University where he invented game theory. John was not a likeable person, he mumbled when he spoke, did not look you in the eye, and did not make friends. But he had a beautiful mind for mathematic problems that allowed him to be valuable to the human race. After ups and downs he much later won the Nobel Prize in mathematics for his valuable game theory.

John fathered a boy with a nurse, Eleanor. He refused to pay for the birth of the boy and did not marry Eleanor. He always thought that Eleanor was inferior to him and it showed in his actions. Later he married Alicia who nurtured and committed him to a hospital by turns. She had borne him a son in one of his lurid moments before he had a nervous breakdown. She was forced to divorce him later although they were together most of the time.

Dr. John Nash was not a nice person to know when he was young before his nervous breakdown at 31 years of age when he was analyzed as schizophrenia. There is a bit of a mystic story that a mathematic genius does his best work by he time he is 30 and as John got closer to that age he worried about his mathematic ability becoming mediocre. Over a period of time he became more difficult until he had a nervous breakdown and ended up in the hospital where he was diagnosed as schizophrenia. This is common enough with very intelligent people who spent most of their time thinking as an occupation.

It seems that schizophrenic may be gene, which runs in a family. We seem to have a lot of them in some West Virginia families. This book provides a very good of describing schizophrenic. . Some times it is difficult to recognize the difference whether one is a genius or a schizophrenic. Only the work that they do differs, in one case it is coherent and to a knowledgeable person beautiful work, or when studied proves to be completely bad and crazy. It may change from one moment to another.

In the case of Dr. Nash schizophrenia took him to Europe where he got into all kinds of trouble trying to fine himself. If his brain had not been so valuable to the world he might have disappeared as so many do with his problem.

As Dr. Nash grew older his mind seemed to slowly recover from the schizophrenia condition. He became easier to know and appreciated Alicia and his sons.

This book was long and difficult to read. It’s very detailed, but I’m glad I finished it and it’s well worth five stars.

well this book has been well commented on so i'll try to keep this brief.

first, it is fact that many great mathematicians develop some sort of mental illness (it happened to kurt godel, georg cantor, and even issac newton). nash, then, is not really an unusual case.

what does make him interesting, then, is the fact that he had "reawakened" from his illness and continued to do math in his old age. such among mathematic circles is very rare.

and his math is indeed great. nash's ability to solve problems concerning manifolds and other topological spaces is still making waves in math today. the layman unfortunately, like nasar, doesn't appreciate this fully, which is a shame. i would have liked to get a mathematician's view on johnny's life.

but, as a pop bio, it's not too bad. i agree with other reviews that it contained too much minute detail, and her references to nash looking like a golden god were overstated and a bit offputting. i wouldn't be surprised if nasar was really in love with nash. (she might have dedicated her book to alicia to subdue any suspicions of that sort.)

in the end, though, we see the life of one of the greatest modern mathematicians, through triumph and tribulation, which was the ultimate goal of the book. i would recommend this book to some and not to others.

On the one hand, Nash's personal life was a lot more captivating than that which the movie portrayed. While the movie simplified and dramatized certain events in his life to the nth degree, such as his "mysterious non-existent roommate", or his high-drama encounters with the "government agents", the chronology was off, and there are many real events from his life that the reader of this biography will find even more interesting and pertinent. Unfortunately, the real Nash is not as sexy as the movie portrays, and he must have been a real jerk to be around at times (he was not only a cruel child, and indifferent friend, but a cruel husband as well, leaving his first wife to the dogs). My main issue with Nasar's writing is that I didn't come away satisfied that his actual work was explained very thoroughly. The wider influence, and importance of his work (as well as other mathematicians mentioned) was too vague (i.e. after reading the biography, I couldn't tell you in great detail why Nash was great, or what his work has done to change anyone's life). Perhaps, like some of the single star reviewers out there, I'm being too harsh in my criticism of Nasar as a writer, but even though I think she portrayed his personality, and the nature of schizophrenia extremely well, she didn't seem to understand the mathematical side of things as well as she probably should have to make this a "classic" biography.

Nevertheless, the lack of mathematics and game theory detail is probably a good thing in that it's lead me to seek out more serious overviews on mathematics, including one called: "The Essential John Nash", edited by Ms. Nasar and Harold Kuhn, 2002. This concise summation of his work is accessible to non-math types, and highly recommended for those more interested in Nash's work than his personal life. It's possible that you will find this compendium of his work to contain everything the biography is missing, and so, both books together probably create the most complete portrait of this "beautiful mind" available to the general public.

This is a good biography, if you are interested in finding out about a truly heroic comeback. The mathematics which are central to Dr. Nash's life are WAY over my head - but do not interfere with the actual telling of the story. One problem which occurs is the way the author writes the story - it is very choppy, but this is still an interesting read.