John Forbes Nash Jr. was born on June 13, 1928 in Bluefield, West Virginia. His father was an electrical engineer and his mother worked as a school teacher. His father gave him scientific volumes to study, while his parents made sure that he received a good education. He became known as an oddball at his school, considering dances, sports, and other social activities to be distractions from his work in scientific study and experimentation. His mother tutored him outside of school, allowing him to skip a grade.
In his senior year of high school, John won a coveted Westinghouse scholarship, one of only ten awarded in the nation. He went to the Carnegie Institute of Technology and, in 1948, graduated with a Master’s degree after only three years. Although he had originally planned to study chemical engineering, he quickly discovered a love for mathematics and changed his major. His advisor wrote a recommendation for him saying “This man is a genius”.
After graduating, John went immediately to Princeton University, where his major accomplishment was to develop his theory of “Nash Equilibrium”, which applied to Game Theory. He rarely attended class, insisting that it would ruin his originality. He constantly looked for ways to establish himself in the field of mathematics in order to become the world’s greatest mathematician. He constantly walked through the hallways whistling Bach’s “Little Fugue” and rode his bicycle in a figure-eight or infinity symbol in the quadrangle on campus.
After he graduated with his Ph.D, John moved to Boston, where he became a distinguished member of the faculty at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was called the “kid professor” by students since he was so young. In 1958, he was featured in Fortune Magazine as one of the brightest stars in the field of mathematics.
He suffered, and has since recovered from schizophrenia. Today, Nash serves in the department of mathematics at Princeton. His life was immortalized in the film “A Beautiful Mind”, with his character portrayed by Russell Crowe.