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A Beautiful Mind: A Biography of John Forbes Nash, Jr., Winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics, 1994
by Sylvia Nasar
Product Group: Book
Publisher: Simon & Schuster (1999-05-05)
ISBN: 0684853701
EAN: 9780684853703
Dewy Decimal #: 510.92
Paperback: 464 pages
Edition: 1
SKU: 25720
Condition: Like New
Comments: THE SOFTBACK BOOK! SCHUSTER, 1998. THE UNABRIDGED 1ST EDITION. With Russell Crowe on cover. SOFTCOVER BOOK and pages are IN FINE CONDITION, CLEAN AND TIGHT. Rapid shipping w/FREE tracking. GREAT PACKAGING. Air mail.
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Editorial Reviews
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Amazon.com Review
Stories of famously eccentric Princetonians abound--such as that of chemist Hubert Alyea, the model for The Absent-Minded Professor, or Ralph Nader, said to have had his own key to the library as an undergraduate. Or the "Phantom of Fine Hall," a figure many students had seen shuffling around the corridors of the math and physics building wearing purple sneakers and writing numerology treatises on the blackboards. The Phantom was John Nash, one of the most brilliant mathematicians of his generation, who had spiraled into schizophrenia in the 1950s. His most important work had been in game theory, which by the 1980s was underpinning a large part of economics. When the Nobel Prize committee began debating a prize for game theory, Nash's name inevitably came up--only to be dismissed, since the prize clearly could not go to a madman. But in 1994 Nash, in remission from schizophrenia, shared the Nobel Prize in economics for work done some 45 years previously.Economist and journalist Sylvia Nasar has written a biography of Nash that looks at all sides of his life. She gives an intelligent, understandable exposition of his mathematical ideas and a picture of schizophrenia that is evocative but decidedly unromantic. Her story of the machinations behind Nash's Nobel is fascinating and one of very few such accounts available in print (the CIA could learn a thing or two from the Nobel committees). This highly recommended book is indeed "a story about the mystery of the human mind, in three acts: genius, madness, reawakening." --Mary Ellen Curtin
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Product Description
In this powerful and dramatic biography Sylvia Nasar vividly re-creates the life of a mathematical genius whose career was cut short by schizophrenia and who, after three decades of devastating mental illness, miraculously recovered and was honored with a Nobel Prize. A Beautiful Mind traces the meteoric rise of John Forbes Nash, Jr., a prodigy and legend by the age of thirty, who dazzled the mathematical world by solving a series of deep problems deemed "impossible" by other mathematicians.But at the height of his fame, Nash suffered a catastrophic mental breakdown and began a harrowing descent into insanity, resigning his post at MIT, slipping into a series of bizarre delusions, and eventually becoming a dreamy, ghostlike figure at Princeton, scrawling numerological messages on blackboards. He was all but forgotten by the outside world -- until, remarkably, he emerged from his madness to win world acclaim. A feat of biographical writing, A Beautiful Mind is also a fascinating look at the extraordinary and fragile nature of genius.
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Customer Reviews
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Mathematician-bio or creepy gay p*rn, you decide
Rating  (2)
Date: 2008-10-10
1 out of 1 customers found this reveiw helpful
Here are typical descriptive passages from A Beautiful Mind. My comments are in square brackets.
Description of Nash: "He had the build... of an athlete, 'a very strong, very muscular body,' one fellow graduate student recalled. He was, moreover, 'handsome as a god,' according to another student... His hair flopped over his forehead; he was constantly brushing it away. He wore his fingernails very long, which drew attention to his rather limp and beautiful hands and long, delicate fingers." [I do find very long fingernails so fetching on a man. He is the very model of a modern major general.]
There are similar descriptions of other mathematicians. For example a professor of Geometry is described as having the "body of a gymnast." [Just the indispensable thing for a professor of Geometry. One cannot help but picture him doing cartwheels in the lecture hall to illustrate a rotating pentagon.]
Another mathematician, Artin, is described as follows: "Slender, handsome, with ice-blue eyes and a spellbinding voice, Artin looked like a 1920s German matinee idol. He wore a black leather trench coat and sandals throughout the academic year, wore his hair long and smoked incessantly... He was well known for screaming and throwing chalk at students." [Sound like a matinee idol to you? ... or like Gary Numan on Benzedrine.]
The book is pathological, diagnostic of the author's (somebody named Sylvia Nasar) insanity. Also, Nasar includes lengthy technical accounts of mathematical ideas without any attempt at explication, leaving the reader to think, "Deep stuff, I guess..." She also describes in words a board game Nash allegedly invented ("Hard evidence of his genius") without any diagram of the board, the starting array of playing pieces. She seems to want the reader to get aload of this board game (modestly named "Nash") but is so incapable of straight thinking that she does not just provide a diagram, showing you how to make a board and play it. The reader is left clueless. Nasar is an example of ordinary madness of the very lowest water.
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Reads like a novel
Rating  (5)
Date: 2008-09-27
(Spoiler alert) The book wasn't anything like the movie, but an excellent and engaging read. Nasar does a thorough job of including an adequate amount of detail about the influences in Nash's life without getting too bogged down in name dropping (the list of influences is interesting). The progression of his life, as told in the book, and the events that shaped his influence in the fields of mathematics and economics, all leading to his Nobel Prize award are put together well to keep the story moving. A fast-paced, compelling read.
Two minor criticisms were the omission of occasional details about who people were or specifics of some events the reader was expected to be familiar with, and the lack of explanation about some of the theorems and proofs Nash worked with that would have provided additional insight into the level of his genius (but might also have weighed the book down).
Overall, "A Beautiful Mind" is a very worthwhile read and exciting, non-mainstream biography.
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An Opinion of "A Beautiful Mind" from a fellow schizophrenic
Rating (5)
Date: 2008-07-12
I read this book about two weeks ago, and I couldn't put it down. Maybe my opinion is biased because I have schizophrenia myself, but I found this story to be particularly encouraging in terms of my own recovery. The genius John Nash refused the coercive treatments of psychiatry and recovered naturally as some people do. I think it's sad that John could never reach the height of his mathematical genius again, after his illness, but it's still a hopeful story because he made a complete recovery, in my opinion. This book explains the mysterious and challenging symptoms of a misunderstood illness, and it also tells a tale of a person with the classic schizophrenic personality. It seems Nash was predisposed to the illness, and his behavior leading up to his first episode is characteristic of they typical schizophrenic. The difference between Nash's story and those of so many others with this difficult illness is that John was a true genius, became mad, and then recovered through sheer willpower. I think this book challenges the prevailing biopsychiatric model of schizophrenia and demonstrates that people can indeed recover without the use of toxic psychiatric drugs. You can also learn a lot about the politics of the Nobel Prize in this book.
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A Beautiful Mind
Rating (5)
Date: 2008-05-28
I saw the movie and loved it, BUT the book is much, much better. I am a physician and have treated patients with schizophrenia. This book is a must read.
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Accurate, well-written and readable
Rating (5)
Date: 2008-05-10
1 out of 1 customers found this reveiw helpful
I assisted Nash with the C programming language at Princeton and was a source for the book.
I found the book accurate, well-written, and readable. The part of the book that talks about the period in which Nash's economics prize was considered was indeed one in which this very private man was under a microscope, and my supervisor warned me to be very sensitive to his condition.
Sylvia Nasar knows her craft very well. The book is narratively organized, and she doesn't need to do dramatic flashbacks or grabbers to get you to keep turning the pages. It's a man's life, in America of the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s...to the early nineties, by which time Nash had become the Phantom of Fine Hall.
But, Phantoms have a story too. Anyone interested in the human side of math and science, anyone interested in psychology, anyone who is impressed by women who both "stand by their man" and get a career of their own, will enjoy reading the story.
The book is much more detailed and far more accurate than the movie, which had to take liberties with the truth to be entertaining. It includes Nash's other common-law wife Eleanor and a son by that marriage, which was very different from Nash's relationship with Alicia.
The book is long but will probably be very rewarding for most readers.
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