John Nash, mathematician who inspired A Beautiful Mind, killed in car accident – ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)
John Nash, mathematician who inspired A Beautiful Mind, killed in car accident
Nobel Prize-winning mathematician John Nash and his wifey were killed in a car accident.
Reuters: Bobby Yip
Mathematician John Nash, a Nobel Prize winner who inspired the movie A Beautiful Mind, was killed in a car crash along with his wifey in Fresh Jersey, US police have confirmed.
The duo were in a taxi whose driver lost control and crashed into a guard rail at Four:30pm on Saturday (local time) while driving on the Fresh Jersey Turnpike.
“The taxi passengers were ejected,” Sergeant Gregory Williams told AFP.
Sgt Williams said the crash happened as the taxi driver attempted to pass another car.
The driver was airlifted to hospital with non-life-threatening injuries, while a passenger in the other car suffered neck and back ache.
The Oscar award-winning film A Beautiful Mind, starring Russell Crowe, was loosely based on Nash’s longtime fight with schizophrenia.
Extreme life of a beautiful mind
Crowe wrote on Twitter that he was stunned by reports of the death of Nash and his wifey, Alicia.
The film’s director Ron Howard also paid tribute to the pair, praising Nash and his wifey as “brilliant” and “remarkable” respectively.
“It was an honor telling part of their story,” he wrote on Twitter.
Nash, a Princeton University scholar, was awarded the Nobel Prize for economics in one thousand nine hundred ninety four for his work on game theory and the mathematics of decision-making.
In March, Nash received the two thousand fifteen Abel Prize from the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters for his work on partial differential equations, used to describe the basic laws of scientific phenomena.
The award is one of the most prestigious in mathematics and includes an $800,000 prize.
Nash was eighty six and his wifey was 82, and were living in Princeton Junction, Fresh Jersey, according to Fresh Jersey police.
Nash’s ‘achievements inspired generations’
Nash was born in Bluefield, West Virginia on June 13, one thousand nine hundred twenty eight to John, an electrical engineer, and his wifey, Virginia, a former school teacher.
Audio Two:51 Listen to Thomas Oriti’s report
He went on to explore mathematics at what is now Carnegie Mellon University and received a graduate degree from Princeton, where he said he very first became interested in game theory.
Nash’s life story took a twist in early one thousand nine hundred fifty nine when he began suffering from “mental disturbances” that caused him to resign his faculty position at MIT.
Outward Link russell crowe nash tweet
Eventually diagnosed with schizophrenia, Nash faced a lifelong fight with delusions, which affected his career and marriage to Alicia, whom he wed in 1957.
The duo would divorce in the early 1960s, but remained in contact and remarried decades later in 2001. By the time Nash received his Nobel Prize, his delusions had decreased.
“I am still making the effort and it is conceivable that with the gap period of about twenty five years of partially deluded thinking providing a sort of vacation, my situation may be atypical,” Nash wrote in an autobiographical description, published at the time of his Nobel Prize award in 1994.
“It did happen that when I had been long enough hospitalised that I would ultimately renounce my delusional hypothesis and revert to thinking of myself as a human of more conventional circumstances and come back to mathematical research,” he said.
Outer Link Nash explains why winning a Nobel Prize impacted his life
Both Princeton president Christopher Eisgruber and Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis tweeted about Nash’s inspirational achievements upon hearing of his death.
“John’s remarkable achievements inspired generations of mathematicians, economists and scientists who were influenced by his brilliant, groundbreaking work in game theory,” Mr Eisgruber tweeted.
“Reading your work was inspirational. Meeting you, and spending time together, was an unearned bonus. Farewell John Nash Jr,” Mr Varoufakis said.
