A Beautiful Mind

John Nash is born and raised in Bluefield, West Virginia. As a child, he is introverted and quiet, preferring reading and performing experiments to playing with other children. He is obsessed with codes and patterns and enjoys playing pranks on his sister and schoolmates.

Intending to become an engineer like his father, Nash secures a scholarship to study at the Carnegie Institute of Technology. After a year, he abandons engineering to major in mathematics. He is not popular with his fellow students who find him odd, arrogant, and immature.

Nash continues to be unpopular with his fellows when he becomes a graduate student at Princeton University. Nevertheless, his tutors recognize his great potential and he begins to develop a reputation as a great original thinker, as well as an eccentric scholar who spends much of his time wandering around lost in thought.

While at Princeton, Nash conducts research on game theory, coming up with a theorem later known as the “Nash equilibrium.” Though some consider his work important, it is not until much later that this research will become a key part of modern economics and, eventually, win Nash a Nobel Prize.

Nash takes a lecturing position at MIT as well as summer consultancies at the RAND Corporation. Around this same time, he experiences the first of several sexual relationships with men. The relationship is brief and furtive but is also the first time he experiences reciprocity, helping him move out of his emotional isolation.

Shortly after, Nash begins a secret relationship with a nurse named Eleanor. They have a child together but, to Eleanor’s dismay, Nash does not offer to marry her or even support her, suggesting that she should put the child up for adoption. Around the same time, Nash begins a relationship with Jack Bricker, a mathematics student two years his junior. The relationship is not entirely happy but it helps Nash appreciate human connections. Later, Nash is arrested for indecent exposure after a sting operation in a public convenience and loses his position at RAND.

Shaken from his experiences, Nash starts a relationship with Alicia, an ex-student of his, who pursues him enthusiastically, determined to win his heart. Although he continues to see both Eleanor and Bricker for some time, he eventually marries Alicia and for a while they are quite content.

However, Nash’s mental health declines sharply. He becomes delusional, seeing patterns in mundane occurrences and becoming convinced that he is receiving messages from foreign governments and aliens. Paranoid and distracted, he begins writing incomprehensible letters to foreign officials and talking about world government and threats to world peace.

Nash is involuntarily committed to a mental hospital and diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. For several years, he is in and out of clinics, recovering and being released and then relapsing again. During these relapses he travels to Europe several times, attempting to renounce his American citizenship to become a citizen of the world.

After several years of struggling with Nash’s condition, Alicia divorces him and he is left confused and delusional, wandering around Princeton campus writing incomprehensible messages on blackboards. New students call him “the Phantom” because of his gaunt, disheveled appearance.

Gradually, Nash’s condition improves and by the 1990s he is more like his old self, still eccentric but no longer delusional. He moves back in with Alicia, although only as a “boarder” and begins to develop a relationship with their son, Johnny, who has also begun to experience symptoms of schizophrenia.

As Nash lingers in obscurity, his work becomes more and more recognized as it is picked up by a new generation of economists. Eventually, he receives the Nobel Prize for this work. His mental health continues to improve from this point onwards.

As Nash recovers, he becomes more socially capable and aware of others and begins rebuilding relationships with friends and family. By the time Nash and Alicia remarry, he is working on mathematical research again and is developing increasingly strong relationships with those around him, becoming less isolated and alienated than ever before.