A Beautiful Mind Read Free Page B

spend a few dollars,” Nash told me last year when I was working on a story about how economics Laureates spend their prize checks. “Lots of other academics do that,” he said. “If I was really poor, I couldn’t do that. I was like that.”
    Once threatened by homelessness, John values his home and personal belongings as few of us can. Back at the house after the ceremony, he was looking at a 1950 Parker Brothers version of Hex, the game he’d invented as a Princeton graduate student. He once owned a copy, he said. “I lost so many of my possessions due to my mental illness.”
    He has been able to return to mathematics. “I am working,” he told the
Times
reporter. He no longer dreams of picking up where he left off, but is glad to be able to do serious work and make a contribution. John is once more a fixture at the math table at the Institute for Advanced Study and at tea in the Fine Hall common room. He now has a grant from the National Science Foundation. The other day he gave a seminar at the Institute about his new research on the theory of bargaining. “It actually wouldn’t have been possible in those earlier days because I’m using computational facilities that didn’t exist in the ’50s and ’60s,” he said. “I’m ready to do a publication now.”
    Even more important, his remission and the Nobel have enabled him to renew broken ties. He has reconnected with old acquaintances from Bluefield, Carnegie, Princeton, and MIT. After today’s ceremony, he gossiped happily with a mathematician and an engineer he first met in his twenties. He and Alicia were going to spend their second honeymoon among friends in Switzerland, where John will be giving a talk at a memorial celebration for Jürgen Moser, who died last year.
    John has been able to share his good fortune with those closest to him. He’s been in touch with John David, the older son who was once lost to him. He spends much of his time with his younger son, John Charles. On his wedding day, he proudly described a mathematical result that Johnny has lately been trying to publish. He and his sister, Martha, still talk on the phone every week. And, as today’s scene suggests, he has come to acknowledge Alicia’s central role in his life.
    As for his biographer, John’s attitude has changed dramatically. While this book was being written, he said to a
New York Times
reporter, “I adopted a position of Swiss neutrality.” Since its publication, however, “A lot of my friends, family, and relations persuaded me it was a good thing.” Besides, there is so much in the book that he had forgotten or never even knew. At this point in life, he made it clear, retrieving some of the past has been something of a solace.
    When John met Russell Crowe, who plays him in the movie inspired by his life, he told me that his first words to the Australian actor were, “You’re going to have to go through all these transformations!” Even in the three years since the publication of this book, the transformations in Nash’s life have been as remarkable as any that will be portrayed on screen.
    Princeton Junction, New Jersey, June 1, 2001
     

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Community of Scholars: Institute for Advanced