The Mathematician John Forbes Nash Jr.: A Short Biography

At first glance, John Forbes Nash Jr. seemed to have it all: a Ph.D. from Princeton, a beautiful wife, and a fantastic job teaching mathematics at MIT. He had no idea that at the age of thirty-one, his entire life would fall apart, and it would take decades of hospitalization before his brilliant self would reemerge from the hell of schizophrenia – not unlike a butterfly trapped too long in a cocoon. After a long bout of relative obscurity, mental illness, and poverty, Nash was ultimately awarded – seemingly out of the blue – the Nobel Prize in Economics. At some point during his illness, the world had forgotten about John Nash the man, but that didn’t stop people from remembering all that he’d accomplished in his youth. His work has shaped many areas of industry and academia, and has helped solve many important problems. Ultimately, John Nash pushed past the constraints of his brilliance and madness, and found redemption.