Character Analysis
(Avoiding Spoilers)
Grew Up... in Virginia. You can tell when you talk to him. He’s got a thick Southern accent.
Living... in Massachusetts where he works at MIT's Wheeler Defense Lab. He's desperately trying to come up with a unique math theorem. He can’t stop thinking about his ideas, which he is known to furiously scribble on his windowpanes. And he even plays out his mathematical theories when he is out at bars.
Profession... mathematician. He has been working as a professor, but he has is being pursued by a government agent to work as a code-breaker. But we shouldn’t say anything else about it. It’s Top Secret.
Interests... drinking beer. He says he has a lot of respect for it.
Relationship Status... married to Alicia. They met when he was a professor and she was a student. She asked him out to dinner, and he liked her assertiveness. Among her many special qualities is her patience. She has to be if she is involved with him. He’s high-maintenance, to say the least. Though he fears her patience may be running thin.
Challenge... coping with his mind. He has been diagnosed with schizophrenia and sometimes sees things that are not there. But he thinks he is getting better. As he says about his visions, “I've gotten used to ignoring them and I think, as a result, they've kind of given up on me. I think that's what it's like with all our dreams and our nightmares; we've got to keep feeding them for them to stay alive."
Personality... complicated. He’s cocky but can be shy and awkward. He’s brilliant but can be foolish. He’s detached but is still loving. His mind has so many facets to it that you never know what you’re going to get with him. That’s what makes him so interesting – and ultimately empathetic.
Get to Know him in...
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At Princeton University, John Nash struggles to make a worthwhile contribution to serve as his legacy to the world of mathematics. He finally makes a revolutionary breakthrough that will eventually earn him the Nobel Prize. After graduate school he turns to teaching, becoming romantically involved with his student Alicia. Meanwhile the government asks his help with breaking Soviet codes, which soon gets him involved in a terrifying conspiracy plot. Nash grows more and more paranoid until a discovery that turns his entire world upside down. Now it is only with Alicia's help that he will be able to recover his mental strength and regain his status as the great mathematician we know him as today.
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In this powerful and dramatic biography Sylvia Nasar vividly recreates 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. “How could you, a mathematician, believe that extraterrestrials were sending you messages?” the visitor from Harvard asked the West Virginian with the movie-star looks and Olympian manner. “Because the ideas I had about supernatural beings came to me the same way my mathematical ideas did,” came the answer. “So I took them seriously.” Thus begins the true story of John Nash, the mathematical genius who was a legend by age thirty when he slipped into madness, and who—thanks to the selflessness of a beautiful woman and the loyalty of the mathematics community—emerged after decades of ghostlike existence to win a Nobel Prize for triggering the game theory revolution. The inspiration for an Academy Award–winning movie, Sylvia Nasar’s now-classic biography is a drama about the mystery of the human mind, triumph over adversity, and the healing power of love.
