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 ( )

Stories of famously eccentric Princetonians abound—such as that of chemist Hubert Alyea, the model for The Absent-Minded Professor, or Ralph Nader, said to have had his own key to the library as an undergraduate. Or the "Phantom of Fine Hall," a figure many students had seen shuffling around the corridors of the math and physics building wearing purple sneakers and writing numerology treatises on the blackboards. The Phantom was John Nash, one of the most brilliant mathematicians of his generation, who had spiraled into schizophrenia in the 1950s. His most important work had been in game theory, which by the 1980s was underpinning a large part of economics. When the Nobel Prize committee began debating a prize for game theory, Nash's name inevitably came up—only to be dismissed, since the prize clearly could not go to a madman. But in 1994 Nash, in remission from schizophrenia, shared the Nobel Prize in economics for work done some 45 years previously.

Economist and journalist Sylvia Nasar has written a biography of Nash that looks at all sides of his life. She gives an intelligent, understandable exposition of his mathematical ideas and a picture of schizophrenia that is evocative but decidedly unromantic. Her story of the machinations behind Nash's Nobel is fascinating and one of very few such accounts available in print (the CIA could learn a thing or two from the Nobel committees).

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. ( )