A Beautiful Mind [Paperback]

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.Contents
Prologue
Part One: A Beautiful Mind
1 Bluefield(1928-45)
2 Carnegie Institute of Technology(June 1945-June 1948)
3 The Center of the Universe(Princeton, Fall 1948)
4 School of Genius(Princeton, Fall 1948)
5 Genius(Princeton, 1948-49)
6 Games(Princeton, Spring 1949.)
7 John von Neumann(Princeton, 1948-49)
8 The Theory of Games
9 The Bargaining Problem(Princeton, Spring 1949)
10 Nash's Rival Idea(Princeton, 1949-50)
11 Lloyd(Princeton, 1950)
12 The War of Wits(RAND, Summer 1950)
13 Game Theory at RAND
14 The Draft(Princeton, 195O-51)
15 A Beautiful Theorem(Princeton, 1950-51)
16 MIT
17 Bad Boys
18 Experiments(RAl#z