Read A Beautiful Mind for Free Online

Licensing, Inc.
    A Beautiful Mind is a trademark and copyright of Universal Studios.
    All rights reserved.
    First Simon & Schuster trade paperback edition July 2011
    SIMON & SCHUSTER PAPERBACKS and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
    Manufactured in the United States of America
    10   9   8   7   6   5   4   3   2   1
     
    The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:
Nasar, Sylvia.
    A beautiful mind : a biography of John Forbes Nash, Jr.,
winner of the Nobel Prize in economics, 1994/
    Sylvia Nasar
       p. cm.
    Includes bibliographical references and index.
    1. Nash, John F., 1928– . 2. Mathematicians —
    United States — Biography I. Title
    OA29.N25N37 1998
    510’.92
    [B]— DC21                              98-2795
    ISBN-13: 978-0-684-81906-8
ISBN-10: 0-684-81906-8
ISBN-13: 978-1-4516-2842-5 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-4391-2649-3 (ebook)
     
    The author and publisher gratefully acknowledge permission to reprint material from the following works:
    “The RAND Hymn,” words and music by Malvina Reynolds, © copyright 1961 by Schroeder Music Co. (ASCAP). Used by permission. All rights reserved. “John F. Nash Jr.” (Autobiographical Essay) and “The Work of John Nash in Game Theory” (Nobel Seminar), in Les Prix Nobel 1994 (Stockholm: Norstedts Tryckeri, 1995). Copyright © The Nobel Foundation, 1994. Excerpts from “Waking in the Blue” from Life Studies by Robert Lowell. Copyright © 1959 by Robert Lowell. Copyright renewed © 1987 by Harriet Lowell, Sheridan Lowell, and Caroline Lowell. Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Inc. Excerpts from the letters of Robert Lowell reprinted with the permission of the Estate of Robert Lowell.

F OR A LICIA E STHER L ARDE N ASH

 
Another race hath been, and other palms are won.
Thanks to the human heart by which we live,
Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears,
To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.
    — WILLIAM WORDSWORTH,
“Intimations of Immortality”

Foreword
     
(Adapted from remarks at John Nash’s 80th birthday Festschrift)
    I N J UNE 2006, I went to St. Petersburg to track down the forty-year-old mathematician who had solved the Poincaré Conjecture. Reputedly a hermit with wild hair and long nails who lived in the woods on mushrooms, he was up for a Fields Medal and a $1 million cash prize but had gone into hiding, not just from the media but from the math community. Meanwhile, some folks in Beijing were claiming that they’d beaten him to the punch. It was a great story — if only we could find him.
    After four frustrating days in Russia, my colleague and I hadn’t found a soul who had seen or talked to the guy or his family in years. Then, when we had pretty much thrown in the towel, we stumbled on his mother’s apartment more or less by accident and, voilà, there was the “hermit,” dressed in a sports jacket and Italian loafers, evidently having lunch and watching soccer on TV.
    He gestured for us to sit down and explain what we wanted.
    “My name is Sylvia Nasar,” I began. “I’m a journalist from New York and I’m working on …”
    He interrupted: “You’re a writer?”
    I nodded.
    “I didn’t read the book,” he said, “but I saw the movie with Russell Crowe.”
    The point is that, no matter where in the world you are, you’d have to be a real hermit not to know the inspiring story of John Nash.
    There are lots of stories about the rise and fall of remarkable individuals. But there are very few stories, much less true stories, with a genuine third act. Nash’s story had — has — such a third act. Act III of Nash’s life story is his miraculous reawakening.
    It is that third act that makes Nash’s story resonate with people all over the world — most especially with those who suffer from devastating mental illnesses or love someone who does.
    At one point