John Nash: The Schizophrenic Genius

John Forbes Nash Jr, the recipient of the 1994 Nobel Prize in Economics, the son of his namesake John Forbes Nash Sr, and the basis of Russel Crowe's character in the 2001 Oscar-winning film, 'A Beautiful Mind' was an American mathematician who made significant contributions to differential geometry, partial differential equations, real algebraic geometry, and game theory.

To further Nash's education, his parents sought out chances and made arrangements for him to enroll in advanced mathematics classes at a nearby community college during his senior year of high school. He first majored in chemical engineering while attending Carnegie Mellon University with the full support of the George Westinghouse Scholarship. He then changed his major to chemistry before switching to mathematics at the recommendation of his math professor John Lighton Synge. Following his 1948 B.S. and M.S. in mathematics, Nash earned a fellowship to attend Princeton University, where he continued his graduate studies in science and mathematics.

He started developing his equilibrium theory at Princeton University and made crucial contributions to game theory and real algebraic geometry while a graduate student at Princeton. Nash discovered a novel result in the subject of real algebraic geometry in 1949. While he had not yet worked out the specifics of its proof, he presented his theorem in a contributed paper at the International Congress of Mathematicians in 1950. By the time Nash submitted his research to the Annals of Mathematics in October 1951, his theorem was complete.

Nash moved to differential geometry while working as a postdoctoral researcher at MIT. Nash's work on differential geometry is almost entirely concerned with the mathematical analysis of partial differential equations, despite the conclusions being expressed in a geometrical language. With a 28-page dissertation on non-cooperative games, Nash received his PhD in 1950. The Nash equilibrium is a key idea in non-cooperative games, as defined in the thesis, which was written under the direction of doctoral advisor Albert W. Tucker. A year later, a version of his thesis was printed in the Annals of Mathematics. Nash conducted research on a variety of related game theory ideas, such as the theory of cooperative games, in the early 1950s. Nash shared the 1994 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences with other winners for the work he did.

Around the time he turned thirty, in the late 1950s, Nash began to exhibit symptoms of schizophrenia. According to The New York Times, he started acting strangely and developing paranoia and delusions. He spent countless nights in the hospital during the ensuing decades and cycled on and off antipsychotic drugs. He eventually became enmeshed in delusions, hallucinations, and paranoia that led to institutionalisation in 1959 as a Schizophrenia patient in the psychiatric unit. Nash was often hospitalized and given multiple medications, which caused him to disappear from the big screen. But nonetheless, his work was frequently acknowledged as he taught math and economics classes around the world during this time.

He only experienced audio hallucinations, and never visual ones. He believed himself to be the chosen one and a religious figure. He also believed that the Vatican and the Soviet Union were behind a plot to have him killed. He claimed that he began to "hear telephone calls" in his head from others who disagreed with his opinions. Apparently, Nash was given a top-secret assignment to decode messages concealed in newspaper and magazine patterns in order to find Soviet bombs that had been planted throughout the nation. William Parcher, the manager for the US Department of Defense, gave the mission. Until he saw a confrontation between Parcher and the Soviet Union, which feared John, he was quite enthused. But Parcher intimidated him into completing his assignment. The threat caused John to attempt to run once while delivering a speech at Harvard University, believing the students to be the Soviet Union's army. John hit Dr Rosen, whom he perceived to be the commander of the Soviet army at Harvard University, in an effort to get away. But in truth, it was only hallucinations and delusions. John Nash was forcibly anaesthetized by Dr Rosen, and it was at this point that John Nash's wife, Alicia, learned that he was suffering from paranoid schizophrenia.

In the 1980s, when Nash was in his fifties, things started to get better. According to The New York Times, Nash stated in an email to a coworker in the middle of the 1990s, "I emerged from irrational thinking, ultimately, without medicine other than the natural hormonal changes of ageing. One of the best mathematicians of the 20th century was John Nash. He was also among the most well-known individuals with schizophrenia at the time.