John Nash – biography, wife, son, education, when and how did he die?

John Nash was an iconic American academician famous for his high intelligence and pioneering work in fields such as mathematics, cryptography, and economics. He also played an important role in his fundamental contributions to the study of partial differential equations, game theory and differential geometry, which are widely used in various fields of knowledge. Nash has received many prestigious awards, including the John von Neumann Theory Prize (1978), the Nobel Prize for Dissertation in Economics (1994), and the Abel Prize (2015). At Princeton University, John was dubbed “the ghost of Fine Hall”, his biography titled A Beauti Complete Mindwas released in 1998, while a film of the same name, which revolves around him, was released in 2001 and won four Oscars.

Biography of John Nash

John Nash, whose full name is John Forbes Nash Jr. was born on June 13, 1928 in Bluefield, West Virginia, to an electrical engineer father, John Forbes Nash, who worked for the Appalachian Electric Power Company. His mother, Margaret Virginia, was a teacher before she married John Nash Sr. Young Nash had a younger sister, Martha Nash, born November 16, 1930. He attended kindergarten and public school and was exposed to greater knowledge at a young age of books provided by his parents and grandparents.

Education

After graduating from high school, John Nash moved to Carnegie Institute of Technology to major in chemical engineering on the benefits of the George Westinghouse Scholarship. He would then go on to major in chemistry and later mathematics on the advice of his teacher, John Lighton Synge. Nash earned his BS and MS in mathematics at age 19 in 1948 and was immediately awarded a scholarship to Princeton University to continue his studies in mathematics.

Although he was accepted to Harvard University, he was offered the John S. Kennedy Scholarship and later convinced by Solomon Lefschetz that Princeton valued him more. Lefschetz was at the time chairman of the mathematics department at Princeton. It was while studying at Princeton that Nash began working on his theory of equilibrium, which would later become Nash’s equilibrium. He also holds a Ph.D. degree which he obtained in 1950 with a 28-page thesis.

Among other things, John Nash was famous for his remarkable achievements which continue to inspire generations of economists, scientists and mathematicians. Best described as brilliant and eccentric, the American mathematician was also celebrated for his work on game theory, which won him the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1994.

One of his most prominent ideas, The Nash Equilibrium, which has become an important idea in economic analysis, describes the ability to analyze situations of conflict and cooperation and to make predictions about the behavior of individuals. . Interestingly, it has also found applications in various fields such as artificial intelligence, evolutionary biology, and computer science. In addition to Nash equilibrium, Academician is also known for his functions, Hilbert’s Nineteenth Problem, Nash Embedding Theorem, and Nash–Moser Theorem.

Family – wife and son

Nash and Alicia Esther Nash (née Alicia LardéLopez-Harrison) met in 1951 when John became a faculty member at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge and Alica was then a student in her Advanced Computing course. They were married in an Episcopal church in February 1957 and divorced in 1963. They married again for the second time from 2001 until 2015, when they died in a car accident.

Early in their marriage, Alicia played an influential role in restoring Nash’s sanity after he developed schizophrenia in early 1957. The two eventually divorced in 1963 (as mentioned earlier) as Alicia could no longer continue. to fight the disease. However, Nash and Lardé Lopez-Harrison returned in 2001 after the math genius became mentally stable again. They stayed together until the day they died.

Their marital relationship produced an offspring named John Charles Martin Nash, born May 20, 1959. After Charles was born, he was not named for a year due to his father’s health issues and his mother’s decision to involve her husband in the denomination. Nash’s son, like his father, suffers from paranoid schizophrenia but has a math degree from Rutgers University. According to sources, his parents also became advocates for mental health care after he [John Charles] was also diagnosed with schizophrenia. The brilliant mathematician currently lives in his family home in Princeton, New Jersey.

Besides Charles, John Nash has another son called John David Stier. His mother is Eleanor Stier, a nurse he met in 1952. They never married, and John was not a part of Stier’s life during her pregnancy due to her social status, which he thought was unsuitable. The iconic mathematician reportedly abandoned her after Eleanor told him she was carrying his child. Although David Stier is Nash’s first child, he is rarely associated with the iconic mathematician. In 2002, in the run-up to the Oscars, the film A Beautiful Mind, which is based on John’s life, was criticized for omitting the story of the mathematician’s relationship with the now deceased Eleanor Stier and his son.

How and when did he die?

John Nash died on May 23, 2015, in a car accident in New Jersey, precisely on the New Jersey Turnpike, near Monroe Township. Unfortunately, the famous American mathematician did not die alone, he died alongside his wife while returning from the airport following his visit to Norway, where the academician received the Abel Prize.

State police investigations into the accident took place after the taxi driver hit a guardrail after losing control of the vehicle during lane changes. Nash and his wife reportedly appeared not to be wearing seat belts at the time of the crash. The couple were ejected from the car on impact and were confirmed dead at the scene. His taxi driver and a passenger in another car were injured without endangering their lives.

Prior to his death, John lived in West WindsorTownship, New Jersey, with his wife. And after his death, his obituaries appeared in popular media and science platforms around the world. Among them is an article about his life and accomplishments by The New York Times containing quotes from Nash that have been gathered from media and several other published sources.