Skip to main content

RIP: Mathematician John Nash and Wife Alicia Nash Perish In Car Crash

The Beautiful Mind was 86.

a beautiful mind

If you saw the 2001 film, A Beautiful Mind, you may have not only become fascinated by game theory, but also by the life of Nobel Prize-winning mathematician, John Nash. While his life was way more complicated than was presented in the film, there’s no question that his work in game theory, and more recently in geometric analysis as a senior research mathematician at Princeton, changed both fields forever. Sadly, he and his wife, Alicia Nash, passed away yesterday in a car crash in New Jersey. He was 86, and she was 82.

Recommended Videos

The couple was on their way home from Newark Airport after a trip to Norway where Nash received yet another math-related accolade, the The Abel Prize, the top mathematics award, which he shared with Louis Nirenberg of NYU for their work in geometric analysis. The Nashes were in a taxi and their driver lost control trying to pass a car, crashed into a guard rail, and Mr. and Mrs. Nash, who didn’t appear to be wearing seat belts, were ejected from the car. The driver, meanwhile, was hospitalized with non-fatal injuries.

From the Princeton website:

Noted mathematician John Nash, Jr. received his Ph.D. from Princeton University in 1950. The impact of his 27 page dissertation on the fields of mathematics and economics was tremendous. In 1951 he joined the faculty of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. His battle with schizophrenia began around 1958, and the struggle with this illness would continue for much of his life. Nash eventually returned to the community of Princeton. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1994.

He won the Nobel for creating the Nash Equilibrium. You serious math geeks out there can read his dissertation on the subject HERE.

And yes, Russell Crowe has responded to the death of the man he played in A Beautiful Mind:

RIP John and Alicia. You were both examples of strength, endurance, and our endless capacity to learn and grow.

(via Gothamist)

—Please make note of The Mary Sue’s general comment policy.—

Do you follow The Mary Sue on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Pinterest, & Google +?

Have a tip we should know? [email protected]

Author
Teresa Jusino
Teresa Jusino (she/her) is a native New Yorker and a proud Puerto Rican, Jewish, bisexual woman with ADHD. She's been writing professionally since 2010 and was a former TMS assistant editor from 2015-18. Now, she's back as a contributing writer. When not writing about pop culture, she's writing screenplays and is the creator of your future favorite genre show. Teresa lives in L.A. with her brilliant wife. Her other great loves include: Star Trek, The Last of Us, anything by Brian K. Vaughan, and her Level 5 android Paladin named Lal.

Filed Under:

Follow The Mary Sue: