A Beautiful Mind

John Forbes Nash Jr. is the only person to have won both the Nobel Prize (Economics) and the Abel Prize (the equivalent of a Nobel Prize in the world of mathematics). Nash made fundamental contributions to mathematics, providing major insights into the role of chance and decision-making within complex systems – many found in our everyday lives. In 1959, symptoms of schizophrenia began to emerge and he spent several years being treated in psychiatric institutions. While he was able to return to academic life, the struggle with his illness and is battle to overcome it was the subject of a biography written by Sylvia Nasar’s, which subsequently became a major motion picture bearing the same title “A Beautiful Mind.” Sadly, Nash and his wife Alicia were killed in a car crash (a taxi in which they were riding) in 2015.