Part 1 (1/2)
A Beautiful Mind
by Sylvia Nasar
Foreword
(Adapted from remarks at John Nash's 80th birthday Festschrift)
IN J JUNE 2006, I went to St Petersburg to track down the forty-year-old mathematician who had solved the Poincare Conjecture Reputedly a her nails who lived in the woods on mushrooms, he was up for a Fields Medal and a 1 , not just from the media but fro were claireat story - if only we could find hi to track down the forty-year-old mathematician who had solved the Poincare Conjecture Reputedly a her nails who lived in the woods on mushrooms, he was up for a Fields Medal and a 1 , not just from the media but fro were claireat story - if only we could find him
After four frustrating days in Russia, ue and I hadn't found a soul who had seen or talked to the guy or his family in years Then, e had pretty much thrown in the toe stumbled on his mother's apartment more or less by accident and, voila, 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 anted
”My naan ”I' 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 her story of John Nash
There are lots of stories about the rise and fall of remarkable individuals But there are very few stories, enuine third act Nash's story had - has - such a third act Act III of Nash's life story is his
It is that third act that makes Nash's story resonate with people all over the world -mental illnesses or love someone who does
At one point in the s were all over for Nash, his wife, Alicia, takes John's hand, places it over her heart, and says, ”I have to believe that so extraordinary was possible
Of all the letters I've received from readers, my favorite came from a homeless man It arrived in a dirty envelope with no return address, and it was scrawled on neon orange paper It was signed ”Berkeley Baby” It would never have made it past the New York Times mailroom after the anthrax scare
The letter writer turned out to have been the night rewrite editor on the nosed with paranoid schizophrenia in the mid-1970s Since then, he had adopted the name Berkeley Baby and lived on the streets of Berkeley, California, near the university, a forlorn, sad figure not unlike the Phantoives me hope that one day the world will come back to me too”
The world came back to John Nash after more than thirty years, and it was the third act of his life that drew me to his story in the first place In the early 1990s, I was an econo a Princeton professor about some trade statistics when hearound the ht be on the short list for a nobel prize in economics ”You don't mean the Nash of the Nash equilibrium?” I asked He told me to call a couple of people in the math department to learn more By the time I put down the phone, I realized that this was a fairy tale, Greek edy rolled into one
I didn't write the story immediately Lots of people wind up on short lists for the nobel and never win, so writing about him in a newspaper would have been an invasion of privacy In any case, soot the prize in 1993 The next year, however, I saw Nash's name in the nobel announcement I ran over to my editor to pitch the story and actually et nobody who knew any facts illing to go on the record or even talk to , Nash's sister, finally broke the silence about the nature of the illness that had wrecked his life
Lloyd Shapley, another pioneer of garaduate student in the late 1940s, when he wrote his seame theory: ”He was immature, he was obnoxious, he was a brat What redeeical, beautiful mind
So now you knohoraphy
Because Nash's story is so familiar, I'd like to share so how the book cas that happened after the book and movie broke off
In June 1995, I found otten a publisher, and was about to spend a year at the Institute for Advanced Study Unfortunately, I'd never ed more than a feords with hiao too
Some will reiven hiiven to a doctoral student Fortunately, Nash had ignored von Neunore the advice of rapher
”Dear Mrs Nasar,” a typical note began ”I have decided to take a position of Swiss neutrality ”
Everyone knows the phrase ”It takes a village” It had taken soether a six-line CV and a short list of Nash's publications It took hundreds of sources to piece together his whole story No single individual, not even Alicia or his sons, knew the whole story
It turned out to be possible to stitch together thousands of bits and pieces - gathered fro of documents - into a narrative It worked partly because the , co the action
But ultimately it worked because John Nash was always a star and, all his life, people around hi about hihtly in thebefore the fairy tale ending
And, of course, it worked because Alicia never stopped believing that so extraordinary is possible She wanted his story told because she thought it would be inspiring for people with mental illnesses
A friend once asked Nash where Alicia was John answered ”Having dinner with Sylvia” After a pause, he added, ”I hope they aren't talking about me”
Actually, Alicia was extremely protective of Nash's privacy and incredibly discreet There was only one exception: ere in the baseh the contents of her safety deposit box looking for photos She came across these little 2 x 2 snapshots of her and John with Felix Browder at the UC Berkeley swi pool That was the beefcake shot that convinced Graydon Carter not to kill the book excerpt in Vanity Fair (Brian Grazer told hts to the book because Graydon told hi: ”Doesn't he have the greatest legs?!”
Nash never did agree to give s between biographers and their living subjects, authorized or not, often take place in lawyers' offices Ours did not
Instead, weJudi Dench Nash told us that it was his first Broadway play He and Alicia liked Proof better I was sitting behind thehter David Auburn, the playwright of Proof, told hters of a et his life back is an incredibly sweet experience - even little things like driving again or having coffee at Starbucks When I asked Nash, for a New York Times story about nobel prize winners and how they spent their prize money, how the prize had affected his life, he said, well, now he could buy a 2 cup of coffee at Starbucks ”Poor people can't do that,” he'd observed
Watching soet his life back and in the process touch the lives of millions of people is equally reain pass someone on the street withat the air without telling the, someone with a past, and maybe someone, like John Nash, with a future That's the power of stories