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Loading... A Beautiful Mind: A Biography of John Forbes Nash, Jr., Winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics, 1994 (original 1998; edition 1999)by Sylvia Nasar (Author)
Work InformationA Beautiful Mind: The Life of Mathematical Genius and Nobel Laureate John Nash by Sylvia Nasar (1998)
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. unauthorized biography of Nobel Prize-winning economist and mathematician John Nash by Sylvia Nasar, professor of journalism at Columbia University.. It won the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1998 and was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in biography. ( ) Biography of brilliant mathematician John Nash, his descent into schizophrenia, and his remarkable (and rare) recovery. It includes his friendships and rivalries with other mathematicians. One of the highlights is his relationship with his wife, who had to deal with both his and their son’s mental illness. Nasar includes what she has discovered over the course of writing the book in terms of the heredity of schizophrenia and available treatments, which have changed over the years. I found it fascinating. I own many more paper books than electronic ones - I have the book-collecting bug. Anyway, I bought the paperback version of this book (currently cheaper than the Kindle version). A warning for others, the printing in the book is tiny My close vision is excellent for an oldie, but I doubt I will try to read my paper copy. I'm not sure why Faber chose a miniscule font - the book is around 450pp long, so maybe it was down to cost. ISBN-13 : 978-0571212927 What little I have read is very interesting - hence the 4 *'s https://nwhyte.livejournal.com/3806914.html I got a lot more out of the book than the film. It is honest where the film is not about Alicia's origins, John Nash's sexuality and the nature and course of his illness and career. It goes a bit into the mathematics without trying too hard; in the end, the non-specialist has to take the word of the specialist that this was all Really Important Stuff. But where the book excels is in its examination of the social and political construction of the environment where Nash worked. It had not occurred to me that the Princeton of Einstein (and Nash) was very different from the Princeton of Woodrow Wilson, just a few decades before. Nasar maps out very carefully how the decision of a few intellectual centres of excellence to invest in mathematics - or rather, in mathematicians - was driven by wider political and social currents, including McCarthyism and antisemitism (Nash himself also lurched into antisemitism, and not only when deluded). Her behind-the-scenes account of how Nash almost didn't get the 1994 Nobel Prize is one of the most gripping things I've ever read in a scientific biography. (Yeah, I know it's not technically a Nobel Prize. Sue me.) Some of Nash's friends queried whether the biography was ethical, given that it was written without his consent or cooperation. In fact his attitude was studiedly neutral, and Nasar clearly had full cooperation from his colleagues and lovers, which he could presumably have deterred if he had really wanted to. He was apparently pleased enough with it in the end, and enjoyed the film too, though he commented (rightly enough) that it wasn't really about him. Well-written and meticulously researched biography of John Forbes Nash, Jr. (1928-2015 according to Wikipedia), a brilliant American mathematician who descended into severe mental illness but recovered sufficiently to win the 1994 Nobel Prize in economics, and whose life inspired the film A Beautiful Mind .
Sylvia Nasar, an economics correspondent for the New York Times, presents the life "without theory" of John Forbes Nash Jr., a mathematical genius and inventor of theories of rational behavior, who was a Wunderkind at Princeton when it was populated by the likes of Albert Einstein, John von Neumann and other 20th century luminaries. Has the adaptationIs abridged inAwardsNotable Lists
The true story of John Nash, the math genius who was a legend by age thirty when he slipped into madness; through the selflessness of a beautiful woman and the loyalty of the mathematics community he emerged after decades of ghostlike existence to win a Nobel Prize; now a major motion picture--Cover. No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)510.92Natural sciences and mathematics Mathematics General Mathematics Biography And History BiographyLC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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