The true story of John Nash, much worse than the one presented in “A Beautiful Mind”

Many people far from the world of science discovered who John Nash was after the movie premiered. A brilliant mind, with Russell Crowe in the lead role. To some extent, this Hollywood production idealized the mathematician, something John himself mentioned after watching the movie. But the good news is that there is a truer and almost unknown documentary that tells his story, called The Brilliant Madness🇧🇷

At the awesome.club we decided to look at Nash’s life from a different angle. For that we read the book A brilliant mindin which there is much more biographical data of this man than in the homonymous film.

As a kid, Nash hated math and got the corresponding grades in school. He himself said in his autobiography that everything changed after he read the book. The Great Mathematicians🇧🇷 It was written in such a fascinating and clear way that, after reading it, Nash even managed to understand a little theorem.

Of course, he entered the Faculty of Mathematics and, before that, he managed to acquire knowledge in the field of chemical engineering and international economics. After graduating, John not only received his bachelor’s degree with excellent performance, he also earned a master’s degree and went to Princeton University. Nash had in his pocket a note from a former teacher, which read: “You are a math genius.”

Former study buddies say that John was obsessed with money and incredibly stingy. He got to the point where he literally believed a rumor that had been passed on to him in jest, and went to look for a bank that would deliver free envelopes and stamps when he opened a checking account. Nash never encountered such an institution.

In his student years, he began his first serious love relationship, which is not particularly known to the general public. That relationship ended in a painful breakup. As a result of her, John had a son with whom he never communicated.

Despite the ups and downs of love, Nash hasn’t strayed at all from the set goal. He was 21 when he wrote a dissertation on game theory at Princeton. 45 years later, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics precisely for this work.

After completing his degree, John stayed on to teach at Princeton and worked part-time in private companies. He was 26 years old when the police arrested him for indecent behavior. We don’t know the details of this story, but such an incident could have been the first warning that foreshadowed his mental problems. Due to this misstep, the mathematician lost his privileges at work and his access to secret information was taken away.

A little later, John married a student, Alicia Lardé, who was only 4 years younger than him. A year later, Fortune magazine called him “the rising star of math” and his young wife became pregnant. At the same time, he began to show the first signs of schizophrenia.

The disease was developing rapidly and it was becoming increasingly difficult to hide it from the public. The final straw came when Nash rejected the university’s proposal to be the dean of the Faculty of Mathematics. He stated that he did not intend to waste time on this kind of nonsense and that he wanted to be Emperor of Antarctica.

John lost his job and was forcibly committed to a psychiatric hospital. He was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and forced to take medication for two months. After discharge, he suddenly decided to go to Europe. Alicia left her newborn son with her parents and went after her husband. Nash tried to find political asylum there, but was unsuccessful. He was soon arrested and deported to the United States.

About the visual hallucinations, which play an important role in the film A brilliant mind, the real Nash never had them, he only heard voices. In addition, the mathematician had many unfounded fears, which are also not referenced in the film. For example, when he saw a red tie, he inevitably began to think that he was facing a member of the communist conspiracy.

Contrary to popular belief, John never worked for the Pentagon and did not search for encrypted messages from Russian or Japanese spies. Though he believed the world was conspiring against America and wrote personal letters to the United States government. In short, John tried to convince the state that he needed to use a fundamentally different method to encrypt information and even suggested one. The surprising thing about the idea lies in the fact that this method is what is used today. But at that time, of course, no one replied to his letters.

The disease continued to develop and aggressive treatment in psychiatric hospitals did not yield any results. John talked about himself in the third person, constantly calling his former colleagues to talk about some other insane conspiracy theory, and he was always afraid of something.

When the situation got completely out of control, the deranged Nash was re-admitted to a clinic. There, he underwent insulin shock therapy: an artificial coma induction using insulin. Upon discharge, his former colleagues offered him a job out of compassion, but he declined and returned to Europe.

This trip ended Alicia’s patience. She divorced and raised her son alone. Unfortunately, already in adolescence, it became clear that the child would also have schizophrenia. the boy himself admitted that he believed the voices he heard came from God. The hallucinations were not just auditory, like her father’s, but also visual.

Returning from the “trip”, not without the help of his former colleagues, Nash got a job at Princeton University and was treated by a new psychiatrist who prescribed different drugs than those he had taken in psychiatric centers, which relieved his symptoms. The pills suppressed the schizophrenia, and Nash started talking to his ex-wife and son again. However, the idyll did not last long: John feared that the drugs would affect his brain and his ability to think and stopped taking them. Then the symptoms returned with even more force.

At Princeton, Nash wandered through the university and wrote incomprehensible formulas on blackboards. Because of this, the students nicknamed him “The Phantom”.

Despite the worsening illness, Alicia allowed Nash to move back in with her and their son. The woman thought she had committed treason by divorcing John. Perhaps this fact was what saved the brilliant mathematician from vagrancy, as while he was divorced he did not have his own home and often spent the night in hotels or at a friend’s house.

The disease only weakened in the 1980s. The doctors were stunned, and the secret was that John had made a mental effort to force himself to ignore the symptoms and go back to studying mathematics. He didn’t take any more medication.

But this news also has a downside: schizophrenic symptoms are known to be less pronounced as old age approaches. Perhaps it was a natural process and not an improvement.

In 1994, Nash received the Nobel Prize in Economics for the thesis he wrote at the age of 21. John was not able to give the traditional lecture on these occasions because he feared that, because of his state of mind, things would not go well. Instead, a seminar was organized with the participation of different scientists, in which John’s contribution to game theory was discussed.

A few years later, Nash and Alicia remarried. They had been divorced for 38 years. And, shortly before his death, he received the greatest recognition in mathematics, the Abel Prize, and became the first and only person in the world to have been awarded the two most important prizes at the same time: the Nobel Prize and the Abel Prize.

In 2015, John and Alicia died as a result of a car accident. He was 86 and she was 82. Interestingly, the fatal outcome of the accident was due to a coincidence: the couple was not wearing a seat belt, and the driver of the car (who had put it on) only suffered minor injuries. This shows that even the life of a recognized genius can be destroyed by one small misstep.

A brilliant mind ends on a positive note: old John receives the Nobel Prize, Alicia is by his side, and they have a long and happy life ahead of them. Do you think that the image of Nash created in the film did not coincide at all with the true personality of the genius? Tell us in the comments section.