John Nash: A Tribute to A Beautiful Mind

“I don’t think exactly like a professional economist. I think about economics as an outsider.” – John Nash

Today, on May 24, 2015, the Nobel-Prize Winning Mathematician John Nash and his wife Alicia both tragically lost their lives in a New Jersey taxi drive accident. Most of the world recognizes the Nash name from the 2002 film A Beautiful Mind, starring Russell Crowe and Jennifer Connelly as Mr. and Mrs. Nash.

Some of us know him because we studied the Nash Equilibrium and Game Theory in our MBA Economics classes. My first semester at the Simon Business School kicked my *ss, with Economics, Statistics, Operations and Finance opening my MBA experience. I vividly recall walking into my Econ Final Exam and just minutes before a fellow classmate generously explaining the Prisoner’s Dilemma to me. Sure enough, it showed up on the exam. For some reason I still had a tough time getting my head around it.

A few weeks later, back in Chicago on winter break, my cousins Jen and Alex and I went to see A Beautiful Mind at the local movie theater. And early on in the story, in a fun and eloquent scene, the Nash Equilibrium demonstrates itself perfectly on-screen, all the while disproving Adam Smith: Nash and his three college buddies sit in a pub. There they spot one blond girl and a group of four brunette girls. Nash stops his all his friends from going for the blond and quickly explains that if they do, none stands a chance with her. However, if they each go for one of the four brunettes, then those four women will feel first chosen, and will be more likely to strike up conversation with the rest of the guys. In the end, instead of one guy winning and three losing, all four win. Brilliant!

Now if only that film had come out before my Economics Final Exam!

Those who have seen A Beautiful Mind and have studied Nash’s work know that behind the brilliance also lay turbulence and confusion and mayhem. Brains like his don’t just come up with globally-altering breakthroughs without some cost to the human vessel carrying that brain. Internal demons, mental chaos and an aversion from recognizing the common in what’s common sense to others, can break the simultaneously fragile and strong psyche. It’s well known Einstein struggled with the day-to-day. That’s because when your mind sees things in a perspective, angle and light that’s completely detached from how the people of history have viewed them, it forces the risk of rejection.

Europe banned the books of Copernicus and Galileo and later tried Galileo during the Inquisition. Because proving the Earth spun around the Sun, and not the religious sentiment of the time, was a sin. Tesla died in debt, with his possessions confiscated by the FBI. Marie Curry was denied employment by her native Poland simply because she was a woman. Darwin and his Evolution of the Species is still considered merely a theory in several parts of America, where Creationism is taught side by side, not in religious/private schools where it belongs, but in tax-funded public institutions. Alan Turing cracked the Nazi code only to be ostracized and punished for being gay. And most recently? A subset of the American population has declared a war on science, including barring scientists from the EPA.

This mounting level of rejections means that those who seek to be understood for their groundbreaking thoughts, proven theories and scientific breakthroughs must be protected. And respected. And loved.

Something we saw in 2014’s The Theory of Everything. In that film, Eddie Redmayne and Felicity Jones play Stephen and Jane Hawking, another true life couple where it’s clearly visible that without her support, it’d be tough to imagine how far Hawking would have made it in his life. Sure, his brilliance would forever be his. But the wife? Kids? Family? She was his rock.

It’s interesting that Eddie Redmayne won the Oscar in 2015 and Russell Crowe was nominated in 2002 for their portrayals of Hawking and Nash. Something about those two men and their stories, full of overcoming obstacles with no guarantees of the American cinema-expected happy endings (Nash struggles with schizophrenia; Hawking, ALS, and he and his wife eventually get divorced) connected with the population. Both men were underdogs. Both brilliant. Both had women in their corners that stuck by them and gave them children.

Hawking, from his wheelchair, continues to change the world and has reached millions of new fans thanks to his cult-like status on The Big Bang Theory. He’s one of the lucky ones. The world has embraced him.

And, sadly today our same world has lost Alicia and John Nash. May their love move into a continuum and be like the sum of infinite numbers. A mathematical equation first presented to me in high school. And while I did end up concentrating in Econ (as well as in Marketing) at Simon, that specific numbers problem logically still makes zero sense. How can you possibly add numbers that go on forever?

I wish Mr. Nash could take me to a pub to explain it.

John Nash Image: YouTube/Nobelprize.org

A Beautiful Mind Image: IMDb.com