Beautiful Mind (eBook)

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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**Also an Academy Awardwinning film starring Russell Crowe and Jennifer Connellydirected by Ron Howard** The powerful, dramatic biography of math genius John Nash, who overcame serious mental illness and schizophrenia to win the 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 whothanks to the selflessness of a beautiful woman and the loyalty of the mathematics communityemerged after decades of ghostlike existence to win a Nobel Prize for triggering the game theory revolution. The inspiration for an Academy Awardwinning movie, Sylvia Nasars now-classic biography is a drama about the mystery of the human mind, triumph over adversity, and the healing power of love.