MANY PEOPLE contributed to this book, two above all: my friend of twenty-five years, Ellen Tremper, who cheered me on and rendered invaluable assistance every step of the way, and Harold W. Kuhn, whose enthusiasm for the enterprise and intimate knowledge of John Nash and the mathematics community was a constant source of guidance and inspiration. No one could have done more.
I am deeply indebted to Alicia Larde Nash and Martha Nash Legg, without whose support I could not have embarked on this biography, much less completed it. I am also grateful to John David Stier, Eleanor Stier, and John Charles Martin Nash for their cooperation, and appreciate John Nash’s benign “attitude of Swiss neutrality” toward the undertaking.
No author was ever in better hands than those of Alice Mayhew, my editor, and Kathy Robbins, my agent — not to mention those of Simon & Schuster’s terrific publishing team, especially Robert Labrie, Victoria Meyer, Elizabeth Hayes, and Nira Weisel.
I am thankful to Amartya Sen and Phillip Griffiths for enabling me to spend a vital year as a Director’s Visitor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton; Gian-Carlo Rota for a shorter but equally critical interlude at the MIT mathematics department; and Vivien Arterberry for a productive week at the RAND Corporation.
Joseph Lelyveld, Soma Golden Behr, and Glenn Kramon of The New York Times granted me a generous leave of absence and enthusiastic support.
My colleagues Doug Frantz at The New York Times and Rob Norton at Fortune gave much-appreciated advice and encouragement at every stage.
Avinash Dixit, Harold Kuhn, Roger Myerson, Ariel Rubinstein, and Robert Wilson patiently shared their insights about game theory and served as valuable sounding boards.
Donald Spencer, Harold Kuhn, Lars Hörmander, Michael Artin, Joseph Kohn, John Milnor, Louis Nirenberg, and Jürgen Moser worked hard to help me convey the originality of Nash’s contributions to pure mathematics clearly and accurately.
Superb histories by John McDonald, William Poundstone, Fred Kaplan, and David Halberstam provided much of the context for Nash’s tenure at RAND. Ed Regis’s lively history of the Institute for Advanced Study and Rebecca Goldstein’s delightful novel The Mind-Body Problem were also invaluable.
Richard Jed Wyatt guided me through the vast and fascinating literature on schizophrenia. The extraordinary work of Louis Sass, Anthony Storr, John Gunderson, Kenneth Kendler, Irving Gottesman, Richard Keefe, James Glass, Kay Redfield Jamison, and E. Fuller Torrey provided inspiration as well as important information. Special thanks to Connie and Steve Lieber, the founders of the National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and Depression, for their interest in this project.
Psychiatrists Paul Howard, Joseph Brenner, Robert Garber, and Peter Baumecker provided firsthand descriptions of the institutions where Nash was treated and glimpses into the mysteries of clinical psychiatry.
Jörgen Weibull and other members of the economics prize committee and the Swedish Academy of Sciences were wonderfully hospitable during my visit to Stockholm and helped me decipher the seemingly inscrutable process by which the ne plus ultra of honors is bestowed. Sociologist Harriet Zuckerman’s landmark study of Nobel Laureates served as an excellent road map.
Lloyd Shapley’s loving and lovely phrase “a beautiful mind” became, at Kathy Robbins’s suggestion, the title of the book.
I am infinitely grateful to the hundreds of individuals — mathematicians, economists, psychiatrists, and others who knew John Nash — who supplied the memories from which I’ve woven together his remarkable story. Every fragment, however tiny, added to the vividness of the whole, and each was gratefully received and treasured. In addition to those already cited, I am particularly indebted to Paul Samuelson, Arthur Mattuck, Paul Cohen, Odette Larde, Dorothy Thomas, Peter Lax, Cathleen Morawetz, Donald Newman, Al Vasquez, Richard Best, John Moore, Armand and Gaby Borel, Zipporah Levinson, Jerome Neuwirth, Felix and Eva Browder, Leopold Flatto, John Danskin, Emma Duchane, and Joyce Davis.
Archivists and librarians at Carnegie Mellon University, Princeton University, MIT, Harvard University, the Institute for Advanced Study, the Rockefeller Archive Center, McLean Hospital, the Swiss National Archives, and the National Archive provided important material and expert guidance. Special thanks to Arlen Hastings, Momota Ganguli, and Elise Hansen at the Institute for Advanced Study for making my year at the institute so productive, and to Richard Wolfe for sharing his knowledge of the Cambridge intellectual community.
Ellen Tremper, Geoffrey O’Brien, Harold Kuhn, Avinash Dixit, Lars Hörmander, Jürgen Moser, Michael Artin, Donald Spencer, Richard Wyatt, and Rob Norton read and commented on various drafts. Their painstaking efforts eliminated mistakes, improved expositions, and added important new insights. All errors that remain are, of course, mine.
My husband, Darryl McLeod, and children, Clara, Lily, and Jack, not only lived with this book and its harried author for three years, but pitched in — on the computer, in the library, around the house — when deadlines were looming and the sky seemed about to fall. For their love and patience I am most indebted.