John Nash, ‘A Beautiful Mind’ Subject and Nobel Winner, Dies at 86

[Valin]

NY Times:

ERICA GOODE

MAY 24, 2015

 

John F. Nash Jr. receiving an honorary doctorate in Hong Kong in 2011. Credit Aaron Tam/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

 

John F. Nash Jr., a mathematician who shared a Nobel Prize in 1994 for work that greatly extended the reach and power of modern economic theory and whose decades-long descent into severe mental illness and eventual recovery were the subject of a book and a 2001 film, both titled “A Beautiful Mind,” was killed, along with his wife, in a car crash on Saturday in New Jersey. He was 86.

 

Dr. Nash and his wife, Alicia, 82, were in a taxi on the New Jersey Turnpike in Monroe Township around 4:30 p.m. when the driver lost control while trying to pass another car and hit a guard rail and another vehicle, said Sgt. Gregory Williams of the New Jersey State Police.

 

The couple were ejected from the cab and pronounced dead at the scene. The State Police said it was likely that they were not wearing seat belts. The taxi driver and the driver of the other car were treated for non-life threatening injuries. No criminal charges have been filed.

 

The Nashes were returning from Norway, where Dr. Nash and Louis Nirenberg, a mathematician from New York University, had received the Abel Prize from The Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters.

 

(Snip)

 

 

 

[Valin]

John Nash, RIP

Steven Hayward

May 24, 2015

 

Sad news this morning of the car accident death, at age 86, of Nobel Prize winning economist and mathematician John Nash, made more publicly famous (if not entirely accurately) in A Beautiful Mind.

 

A psychiatrist friend posted the following note on Facebook about the news:

 

 

Let me try, surely in vain, to set the record straight as there are so many subtle but horrifying myths that the Left has created about Nash to suit their purposes. (1) His name has entered science largely through his theory of balance in conflictthe Nash Equilibrium. The first movie to get this wrong had him as a reclusive professor whose computer, Joshua, arrived at the conclusion, Dont Play to avert nuclear armageddon. In fact a stable Nash Equilibrium that averts a nuclear holocaust is attained via Mutually Assured Destructionpeace through strength. This idea was previously lampooned by the Hollywood Lefts caricature of Nashs mentor, John von Neumann, the mad man with the autonomous glove in How I Learned to Love the Bomb. (2) The bar scene in A Beautiful Mind likewise gets it 180 degrees wronggoing for the non-beautiful girl is NOT a Nash equilibrium. The setup cannot produce a Nash equilibrium at all. (3) Nash almost certainly did NOT have paranoid schizophrenia as he remained productive until the end.....(Snip)

[nickydog]

What a stupid way to die after living for so long and accomplishing so much. At least I suppose it was quick.