A Beautiful Mind

Title: A Beautiful Mind – The Life of Mathematical Genius and Nobel Laureate John Nash

Author: Sylvia Nasar

Publisher: TouchStone, 2001 (First published 1998)

ISBN: 9780743224574

Pages: 461

Everyone has heard of a scientist in an unknown land who had gone crazy due to his supreme intelligence. Legends say that he went off-balance after indulging in complex thoughts and experiments (yes, it’s always a ‘he’ in such stories). Nobody could put a name to the protagonist of the tale, and it is always thought to be a figment of imagination. This book presents the story of a gifted mathematician who had gone insane at the height of his career. John Forbes Nash Jr (1928 – 2015) was a mathematician who proposed groundbreaking theorems in the fields of game theory, differential geometry and partial differential equations of pure mathematics. He became mentally deranged at the age of 31 and wandered aimlessly in the campus for three decades prophesying about plans of world domination and how he prevents such events from occurring. After three decades of illness an unbelievable remission took place and Nash could continue his research from where he had stopped. In the meantime, his ideas spread far and wide and he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1994, along with John Harsanyi and Reinhard Seiten. This book tells the story of Nash’s life till the year 1998. Sylvia Nasar is a German-born American journalist. She has contributed to many journals and worked as Professor of Business Journalism at Colombia University. This is her most noted work and is awarded the National Book Critics Circle Award for biography in 1998.

Nash’s succumbing to mental illness is all the more heart-rending on account of the depths he fell into, as a result of social isolation spawned by the disease. At one time, he was a world-renowned mathematician, a genius, an attractive young man who had just married and in the next year, he lost it all and was doomed to psychiatric institutions periodically and became a raving maniac. He loathed being confined to asylums, yet had to contend with forcible incarceration five times and subjected to therapies like insulin overdose and other very potent new drugs. Nash’s social life before the disease struck him was not much to write home about. He was ‘compulsively rational and wished to turn life’s decisions into calculations of advantage and disadvantage, algorithms or mathematical rules divorced from emotion, convention or tradition’. Even then, he had a mistress and an illegitimate son by her. The worst thing was that Nash was extremely reluctant to spend money on them, at one time even suggesting that the child be put up for adoption by other childless couples. The child’s mother had to sue him for child support before Nash was forced to loosen his purse strings to give some money to his first son. His illness manifested itself after his formal marriage to Alicia Nash and a week after the birth of a son by her. Readers’ sympathy should really be heaped on Alicia rather than Nash himself, who was obviously not sensitive to adversities on account of the disease. She had the unenviable task of taking the decision to hospitalize her husband, much against his will, and supporting the family with her meager income. The times had been terrible to her, as seen in her own falling prey to depression and enlisting psychiatric support. She applied for and obtained divorce from Nash after a few years due to the enormous emotional strain. Nash and Alicia lived separately for some years, but then began to live together again. Three years after the publishing of this book, they married again and remained so till the end of their lives. The cruelest cut must have been the moment when their only son was diagnosed with the same mental disorder as his father. He too was committed to hospitals. After more than two decades of falling into solitude and ill-repute, Nash slowly began to grow better and sane. He was still reserved, but such recluse academicians can still be found in many of the world’s universities. Nash’s remission came about in the mid-1980s and he could once again take part in the research taking place at Princeton.

Nash’s contribution to a branch of mathematics called game theory led to a Nobel Prize in Economics. It was a budding field in the 1940s, when the famous mathematician John von Neumann introduced it to the world. But his theorems on two-person, zero-sum games were not realistic and had few practical applications other than in extreme cases of total war. Concepts like deterrence, limited war, disarmament and negotiation, which are so fundamental a part of day-to-day strategies couldn’t be accommodated in Neumann’s scheme of things. Nash elaborated on the idea to other real-world scenarios as well, and speculated about stable strategies which are since called Nash equilibrium. The author does not say much about game theory at all. This is a general drawback of the book itself. Even though it handles the life of a great mathematician and describes the careers of other great contemporaries, it keeps silent about their areas of specialization. The book contains a vivid description of the secret deliberations of the Nobel Prize committee in which some prominent members fiercely opposed Nash’s candidature on account of his persisting illness. It was a great boost to the morale of Nash and the credibility of the prize itself that it was eventually awarded to him.

Persecution on the basis of religion is rife in today’s world. Things were much worse in the interlude between the two world wars when Germany raised antisemitism to the level of a national credo. Hitler and his Nazi party successfully portrayed Jews as the cause of defeat in war and consequent economic woes of the nation. Targeted physical attacks on Jewish enterprises were followed by intellectual skirmishes against Jewish scholars. It may seem outrageous to us now, but Germans didn’t want to claim Albert Einstein as one of them, solely due to his Jewish ancestry. Academicians escaped out of Germany in droves, while the Nazis rejoiced over their exit. However, this turned out to be a drain on the intellectual reservoir of Germany at immense benefit to the U.S, which granted the fugitives asylum in its prestigious universities. The Institute of Advanced Study in Princeton was founded in the first quarter of the twentieth century by Rockefeller and other rich philanthropists. It beckoned the fleeing scientists with open arms. Einstein, John von Neumann and Eugene Wigner were their prize-catches. The Allies got a big boost during the war upon the efforts of these scientists. The nuclear bomb is the most potent weapon proposed and built by the scientific community. This book narrates this brain drain in very good detail.

What is especially noteworthy is the amount of research the author has made to compile this fairly large book. Comments have been sought from nearly all those who knew Nash before he went ill. Another remarkable fact is the level of support provided by the Institute of Advanced Study in Princeton to the sick genius. Though bereft of any official position, it granted him free access to its facilities without hindrance. Such was the degree of respect commanded by Nash that everyone sympathized at his plight and extended whatever help was needed. The book includes some photographs whose clarity and visual appeal leaves much to be desired. Being a biography that covers so large a period, a bit more humour would’ve done wonders to the book.

The book is strongly recommended.

Rating: 3 Star