Princeton, 1950–51
NEITHER THE PROSPECT of playing military strategist, nor living in Santa Monica, nor earning a handsome salary tempted Nash to accept Williams’s offer of a permanent post at the think tank. Nash shared little of RAND’s camaraderie or sense of mission. He wanted to work on his own and to have the freedom to roam all over mathematics. To do that, he would have to obtain a faculty position at a leading university.
For the moment, he planned to spend the upcoming academic year in Princeton. Tucker had arranged for his support by assigning him to teach a section of undergraduate calculus1 and making him a research assistant on his Office of Naval Research grant.2 In fact, Nash intended to devote most of his energy to his own research and to looking for an academic opening for the following fall. But before he could turn to these matters, he was forced to confront an immediate threat to his career plans, namely, the Korean War.
North Korea had invaded the South on June 25, 1950, about the time that Nash was flying to Santa Monica.3 A week later Truman promised to send American troops to repel the invasion. The first reinforcements landed July 19. By July 31, Truman had issued an order to the Selective Service to call up one hundred thousand young men right away, twenty thousand immediately. A week or two later, John Sr. and Virginia wrote that Nash might be in imminent danger of being drafted. Like most Republicans, they disliked Truman and had their doubts about the war. They urged Nash to come to Bluefield as soon as practical to talk with members of the local draft board personally to sound them out about a II-A. Surely, they said, Nash was more valuable at RAND or at Princeton than in uniform.
When Nash left RAND at the very end of August, he flew from Los Angeles to Boston and spent a day at the world mathematical congress, which was meeting in Cambridge.4 He presented his algebraic manifolds result to a small audience there, a nice distinction for a young mathematician. But he was anxious to get back to Bluefield and didn’t stay for most of the meetings.
He was determined to do all he could to avoid the draft. With a war on, even an unpopular and undeclared war, who knew how long he would have to serve? Any interruption of his research could jeopardize his dream of joining a top-ranked mathematics department. Returning World War II veterans had flooded the job market and enrollments were falling because of the draft. In two years there would be another crop of brilliant youngsters clamoring for the handful of instructorships. His game theory thesis had been greeted with a mix of indifference and derision by the pure mathematicians, so his only hope of a good offer, he felt, was to finish his paper on algebraic manifolds.
Besides, he had no wish to become part of someone else’s larger design and dreaded the thought of military life — his hawkish instincts and southern background notwithstanding. He had been one of the few boys at Beaver High who hadn’t prayed for World War II to last long enough so that he would have a chance to serve. Life in the army, with its mindless regimentation, stultifying routines, and lack of privacy, revolted him, and he had heard enough stories from other mathematicians to dread being herded together with the kind of rude, uneducated young men whose company he had been only too happy to escape when he left Bluefield for Carnegie Tech.
Nash proceeded methodically. Once back in Bluefield, he called on two members of the board, including its chairman, a retired attorney named T. H. Scott, whom he later described as “a rock-ribbed Republican (Truman = moron = Roosevelt),” and a Dr. H. L. Dickason, the president of Bluefield State, a black junior college on the far side of the town.5 He made it his business to find out as much as he could about the men who would be deciding his fate. As it turned out, the board had only a fuzzy sense of what Nash was doing. Until he showed up at the Peery building, they had no idea that he had already received his doctorate and had assumed he was returning to Princeton that fall as a student. His student deferment had not yet been canceled.
His meeting with Scott did nothing to ease his anxiety. The board was already working through its list of twenty-two-year-olds. Now that the board knew that he was no longer a graduate student, he might very well be in the next call, which was scheduled for the twentieth of the month, less than two weeks away. Nash mentioned that he was doing classified research for the military, and described both his affiliation with RAND and the ONR project at Princeton. Scott did not rule out the possibility of granting an occupational deferment, but he expressed some skepticism that a young mathematician could be indispensable, except in uniform, in a national emergency. Nash felt slightly better about his meeting with Dickason, who had taught math and physics before the war and appeared to be impressed by Nash’s Princeton degree and associates. It was probably Dickason who tipped Nash off to the fact that merely filing an application for a II-A, an occupational deferment, would temporarily halt the wheels of the draft machinery and take him out of the pool of potential draftees at least until the board had time to consider his II-A application.
Nash wasted no time. In Bluefield, he went to the library and read the Selective Service law. He thought about the board’s psychology. He wrote to Tucker, to the Office of Naval Research in Washington, and no doubt also to Williams at RAND, though there is no record of such a letter.6 (A letter from the Office of Naval Research in Washington, received by Al Tucker on September 15, begins, “John Nash has written me asking if ONR can help get him a draft deferment.”) Nash asked them to request a II-A deferment, but urged them to state only the bare facts, promising more information later — so that “heavier guns may be later rolled out without the appearance” of merely repeating the initial statements.7 He was intent on buying as much time as possible. Later on, in other circumstances, Nash would repeatedly express his dislike and resentment of “politics” and “politicking.” But, impractical, childish, and detached from everyday concerns as he was in some ways, he was quite capable of plotting strategy, ferreting out necessary facts, making use of his father’s connections, and most of all, marshaling allies and supporters.
Tucker, the university, the Navy, and RAND responded sympathetically and promptly, claiming in unison that he was irreplaceable, it would take years to train a substitute, and his work was “essential to the welfare and security of this nation.”8 Fred D. Rigby at the Office of Naval Research in Washington advised Tucker that the best route to take was for a university officer to ask the New York branch of the ONR to write to the Bluefield draft board. “This process is said to work well. Normally, it takes place after the man is put in 1-A, but there is no rule against its use in advance of that event.”9 Rigby also noted that “this kind of question is coming up frequently these days,” suggesting that Nash was hardly alone among young academics with Defense Department affiliations seeking to avoid the draft. Rigby also promised that, should the branch office action fail, “we will then make a second try directly with the national selective service organization,” adding, however, that in all likelihood “this will not be necessary.”10
The concerted effort to save Nash from the draft was not much different from similar efforts made for a great many other young scientists at the time. The Korean War did not inspire the same patriotic fervor as World War II.11 Many academics regarded defense research as a kind of alternative service and the notion of exempting especially accomplished and valuable individuals had antecedents even in World War II.12 Kuhn remembers trying but failing to join the Navy’s V-12 program, which would have allowed him to spend the war attending the same classes at Caltech that he would have attended as a civilian, only in uniform. He wound up in the infantry only because he failed the Navy’s tougher physical.13 Korea did not prompt the massive draft evasion of the Vietnam era, de facto a working-class war, but among a certain elite in Nash’s generation there was a sense of entitlement and a lack of embarrassment about obtaining special treatment.
The urgency of Nash’s efforts to avoid the draft suggests deeper fears than those related to career ambitions or personal convenience. His was a personality for which regimentation, loss of autonomy, and close contact with strangers were not merely unpleasant, but highly threatening. With some justification, Nash would later blame the onset of his illness partly on the stress of teaching, a far milder form of regimentation than military life. His fear of being drafted remained acute long after the Korean War ended and after he turned twenty-six (the age cut-off for draft eligibility). It eventually reached delusional proportions and helped drive him to attempt to abandon his American citizenship and seek political asylum abroad.
Interestingly, Nash’s gut instinct has since been validated by schizophrenia researchers.14 None of the life events known to produce mental disorders such as depression or anxiety neurosis — combat, death of a loved one, divorce, loss of a job — have ever been convincingly implicated in the onset of schizophrenia. But several studies have since shown that basic military training during peacetime can precipitate schizophrenia in men with a hitherto unsuspected vulnerability to the illness.15 Although the study subjects were all carefully screened for mental illnesses, hospitalization rates for schizophrenia turned out to be abnormally high, especially for draftees.
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Rigby’s prediction was soon borne out. A handwritten note dated September 15 from the files of Princeton’s dean of faculty, Douglas Brown, records a telephone call from Agnes Henry, the mathematics department secretary, who informed the dean’s secretary that John Nash had telephoned her asking the dean to write to the Office of Naval Research.16 A few days later Nash filled out a university form, “Information Needed in a National Emergency,” in which he stated that he was registered at Local Board 12 in Bluefield, that his current classification was I-A, and that he had a “chance for 2-A, application pending.”17 The form noted that Nash was engaged in project 727, Tucker’s ONR logistics grant. In response to the question “Are you engaged in any other research work or consultation of possible national interest?” Nash responded yes and listed “consultant for RAND corporation.” A note, added perhaps by the head of Princeton’s grants office, mentioned that Nash had spent “3 years or more on the theory of games and related fields. Wrote paper in this field when at Carnegie Tech as undergraduate. Two years to get Ph.D. at Princeton. Dr. Rigby has already told NY to support.”
The university immediately wrote to ONR stating that “this project is considered by the Logistics Branch of ONR, Washington as a very important contribution in the present national emergency. Dr. Nash is a key member of our staff in this project and is one of the very few individuals in the country who have been trained in this field.”18 The ONR followed, on September 28, with a letter to the draft board saying that Nash was “a key research assistant” and “this contract is an essential part of the Navy Department’s research and development program and is in the interest of national safety.”19
RAND protected Nash as well. RAND’s former manager of security, Richard Best, recalls writing letters for Nash and another mathematician from Princeton, Mel Peisakoff, to “save” them from the draft.20 (Peisakoff’s recollection differs from Best’s, however; he says he wanted to enlist but that his superiors at RAND wouldn’t let him.)21 “We had a lot of reservists and a great many young people,” said Best. “In 1948, the average age was 28.35 years. The personnel office wasn’t well [equipped to handle the situation]. I wrote some form letters to the draft board for Nash,” he recalled.22
Nash’s lobbying campaign worked, though he was not immediately granted the desired II-A. By October 6, the university informed Nash that “you seem to be safe until June 30.”23 Apparently, the board had simply postponed the designation for active service until June 30, 1951. The university advised Nash, “I would suggest that we defer any further action until next spring, at which time, we can again apply for a II-A classification and can consider an appeal if this should be rejected.”24 But, at least for now, he had prevented the military from wrecking his plans. More important, by protecting his personal freedom, Nash may have protected the integrity of his personality and won the ability to function well for longer than he might otherwise have.