American Nash John Forbes is called the genius of mathematical science. His extraordinary thinking allowed him to make a significant contribution to the development of game theory, for which he received the Nobel Prize in Economics. Forbes is known to people far from the world of science as the prototype of the protagonist of the popular Hollywood film A Beautiful Mind with Russell Crowe.
Biography: early years
Nash John Forbes was born on June 13, 1928 in the American town of Bluefield, West Virginia. He was from a simple family: his mother worked as a school English teacher, and his father was an electrician.
Nash grew up as an ordinary boy. At school, he studied averagely, he did not even have a craving for mathematics then. This subject bored him. In those years, Nash was fascinated by chemical experiments, the game of chess and books. He also knew all of Bach's compositions. He developed a love for the exact sciences at the age of 14 after reading the book "Great Mathematicians".
Career
After high school, Forbes entered Carnegie Mellon University. There he tried to study chemistry and international economics, but in the end he settled on mathematics. After graduation, Nash became a graduate student at Princeton University. At the same time, he became interested in game theory, and later defended his dissertation on this topic.
In 1950, Forbes joined the research corporation RAND. In parallel, he taught calculus courses at Princeton University. A year later, Forbes began working as a research assistant at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
In 1959, Forbes was diagnosed with schizophrenia and dropped out of scientific life for several years. In the 80s, the disease briefly retreated and he plunged headlong into research.
One of Nash's landmark scientific achievements is the derivation of the equilibrium formula in game theory. His discoveries were subsequently actively used in strategies for conducting various transactions, in particular auctions.
In 1994, Nash was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics for his work Equilibrium Analysis in the Theory of Noncooperative Games. In 2015, he received the prestigious Abel Prize. He became the first scientist to receive two such awards.
Personal life
Nash John Forbes was married to Alicia Lard. He met her while working at the Institute of Massachusetts. Alicia is five years younger than Nash and was a physics student at the time.
The wedding took place in 1957. After 1, 5 years, Forbes developed mental disorders. In 1959, when his son was born, doctors had already diagnosed him with a disappointing diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia. Forbes spent about a year in a mental hospital.
At first, the spouse hid his diagnosis from the public. However, with each passing year, schizophrenia progressed. He was constantly in an anxious state, talked about himself in the third person, wrote meaningless letters, at lectures unexpectedly began to talk about messages from aliens.
In 1963, Alicia filed for divorce because she could no longer tolerate her husband's "kicks". After the breakup, Nash began taking other medications and his condition improved significantly. However, he soon decided that the pills were interfering with his mental activity. Refusal to take them led to an exacerbation of the disease.
In 1970, Alicia was reunited with her husband. And in 2001 they got married for the second time. Their son had already become a mathematician by this time. Certainly not as famous as his father.
Forbes also has an illegitimate son, born of a short-term romance with nurse Leonore Steer. This relationship was before marriage with Alicia. Forbes did not accept his son, he did not even give him his last name and refused to pay alimony. The boy spent his childhood in an orphanage.
In 2001, the Hollywood film "A Beautiful Mind" was released. It was based on the book A Beautiful Mind: The Life of a Mathematical Genius and Nobel Laureate John Nash, which was written by a colleague of the scientist. The film was a great success.
On May 23, 2015, the famous scientist died in an accident. Together with him, his wife, who accompanied him everywhere, died.
