John Forbes Nash,Jr.is an American mathematician whose works in game theory,differential geometry,and partial differential equations have provided insight into the forces that govern chance and events inside complex systems in daily life.His theories are used in market economics,computing,evolutionary biology,artificial intelligence,accounting,politics and military theory.Serving as a Senior Research Mathematician at Princeton University during the latter part of his life,he shared the 1994 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences with game theorists Reinhard Selten and John Harsanyi.
Nash was born on June 13,1928,in Bluefield,West Virginia.His father,after whom he is named,was an electrical engineer for the Appalachian Electric Power Company.His mother,born Margaret Virginia Martin and known as Virginia,had been a schoolteacher before she married.Both parents pursued opportunities to supplement their son's education,providing him with encyclopedias and even allowing him to take advanced mathematics courses at a local college while still in high school.Nash accepted a scholarship to Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon University) and graduated with a Master's Degree in only three years.
Nash is the subject of the Hollywood movie A Beautiful Mind.The film,loosely based on the biography of the same name,focuses on Nash's mathematical genius and struggle with paranoid schizophrenia.