[Music] [Music] [Music] mathematicians have the propensity of be eccentric more than most people but there was no hint that it would shade over into fully delusional psychotic behavior we were all aware that he had a a great career that was shattered in a few minutes it was a very disastrous fall of someone who was promising Beyond any reasonable limit he was so incredibly himself so special and so unusual it was just an odity and there was something sweet about it the idea that someone who had been mentally ill and impoverished and really on the fringes of society for decades was being considered for a Nobel Prize I thought that was [Music] amazing Madness can be an escape things are not so good you may be want to imagine something better in manness I thought I was the most important person of the world and people like the pope would be just like enemies who would try to uh put me down [Music] [Applause] [Music] somewhere [Music] [Music] in September 1949 the world learned that the Soviet Union had joined the United States as a nuclear power [Music] the shocking news intensified fears in the US and put a premium on mathematicians mathematicians had helped win World War II now there was hope they could protect America's strategic Edge Princeton University boasted the most elite math department in the world each of its graduate students was handpicked that year one stood out a 20-year-old from West Virginia named John Forbes Nash these young mathematicians were all pretty cocky but he towered over them in arrogance and confidence and also in eccentricity John Nash was always an entity unto himself when John walked into the room you knew that John walked into the room I think he thought of himself as Superior intellectually mathematically Superior we thought highly of ourselves and each other but with John it was double John just was just very clearly above it Nash rarely attended class claiming it would BL blump his originality he was obsessed with making a name for himself and was always on the hunt for problems that had defeated other mathematicians there is something of that in my approach to mathematics I I have uh tended to think that the thing to do is to get away from what other people are doing and not not to follow directly in any anyone's recent work he didn't study anything he didn't assimilate other people's work what he did was to try to find his own way of solving very difficult problems and he thought he had the talent to fulfill these Ambitions of being the world's greatest mathematician Nash soon acquired a reputation for being both brilliant and odd in the quadrangle he wrote a bicycle in figure8 over and over unpaced the hallways obsessively whistling box little Feud fine Hall is where the mathematicians met I went there and I looked around I knew a number of the people but I didn't know them all and I thought this is the strangest group of people in in the world Not only was Nash not an exception to that but I think he was quite far off the chart he obviously irritated some people by what I think they regarded as extremely eccentric Behavior here he was certainly not a conformist to anyone's standard even as a boy growing up in Bluefield West Virginia deep in the Appalachian Mountains John Nash stood out I was in grade school and I would be doing arithmetic I found myself working with larger numbers than other students would be using that they I would have several digits and they would have maybe two or three digits one time one of the teachers said he couldn't do the math this is like fourth grade and my mother laughed because it was obviously the point was he was doing it differently I think my parents always knew that John was Bri his father John Senior was an electrical engineer his mother Virginia a former teacher tutored John at home and had him skip a grade in School one time someone suggested that I was a prodigy another time it was suggested that I should be called Bug brains because I had ideas that were sort of buggy and not perfectly [Music] sound he took his share of abuse from certain groups the brain working a little bit faster than anybody's else's so everybody else felt like they had to ridicule it a little bit his senior year in high school John won a Westinghouse scholarship one of only 10 awarded nationally 3 years later he graduated from Carnegie Institute of Technology with a master's degree in math his adviser wrote him a one- sentence recommendation this man is a [Music] genius the first thing that he did at Princeton which wowed everyone and made his reputation was he invented this game which was known around the common room as Nash Nash's deceptively simple game of strategy swept the math department before long he applied his interest in games to a new field of mathematics called Game Theory Game Theory attempted to explain the Dynamics of human Conflict by analizing strategies used in games Nash was interested in everything in mathematics but what he was really interested in were the big problems at that moment in time game theory was the sexy glamorous field if you wanted to make a splash it was a good place to be just a year after arriving at Princeton he began work on an idea that challenged the conventional thinking in Game Theory classical game theory was basically two people playing against each other two person game in which which if one person wins the other person loses suppose you have many players Game Theory got into a phase that people couldn't really deal with it they didn't have to State the problem if we could make a theoretical model that would answer questions of why do you Bluff in poker why would you bet when you have a low hand why would you fail to bet if you have a high hand if we could analyze things like that then we could handle real life problems in economics in business in politics he had that Vision Nash's Insight was another deceptively simple one he proved that in every game there is a best strategy for each player given the strategies chosen by the other players he called it the equilibrium point in the spring of 1950 Ash presented his elegant [Music] proof he was only [Music] 21 years later what became known as the Nash equilibrium would revolutionize economics but when it was first completed nobody recognized its potential not even [Music] Nash after receiving his PhD Nash moved to Boston and joined the faculty of MIT students called him the kid Professor but he considered himself Head and Shoulders above his colleagues basically John was a out andout and uninhibited and Shameless elitist he was only interested in people who could operate more or less on the same mental level that he was at he was very Brash very boastful very selfish very egocentric his colleagues did not like him especially but they tolerated him because his mathematics were so brilliant I was thinking about a problem trying to get somewhere with it and I couldn't and I couldn't and I couldn't and I went to sleep one night and I [Music] dreamed I did not dream directly of a solution to that problem rather I dreamt that I met Nash and I asked him the problem and he told me the answer when I did finally write the paper I gave him credit it was not my solution I could not have done it [Music] myself he was part of this group of friends that Donald my husband had this was a crew who were extremely competitive and Nash was at the top of the Heap he was the best the following year Nash began his first serious relationship elanar steer was a shy compassionate nurse 5 years his senior 2 months after they started dating elanar discovered she was [Music] pregnant she gave birth to a baby boy and named him John Nash refused to pay for the delivery wouldn't even add his name to the birth certificate unable to support her son on her own elanar was forced to place him in foster care for much of his childhood she was pretty hurt she's very hurt I think she was quite fond of my father you know and uh things didn't happen the way she expected them to the couple drifted apart Nash kept the affair a secret his parents and colleagues didn't even know he had a son not long after breaking up with elanar Nash met Alicia larde a 21-year-old from El Salvador and one of his students a physics major she was one of only 16 women in a class of 800 at MIT she was an extremely attractive girl and not American and I somehow think that that was significant that she was not your ordinary college girl that she had also come from a very different place at the time he was a little bit like the fair-haired boy of the math department he was I think considered very young for his position and he was very Nic looking you know when she was younger she wanted to be another Madam C John's ambition was one of the things that attracted Alicia to him she had that desire and she transferred it to [Music] him in February 1957 Alicia and John Nash were married in a small private ceremony in Washington DC John is marrying somebody who was intelligent and that he cared for and she car she obviously cared for him everything was [Music] great [Music] since arriving at MIT Nash had solved a series of imposing problems in mathematics ranging from algebraic geometry to partial differential equations unlike his work in Game Theory these groundbreaking proofs dazzled the mathematical world we would all be climbing the mountain the mountain being mathematical perfection he had a different approach we came up this way and he came this way in July 1958 Fortune Magazine featured him as one of the brightest stars in mathematics he had just turned 30 for a mathematician turning 30 it's lot like for a ballet dancer or an athlete age is your enemy by his own standards Nash had fallen short for a decade he had pursued the fields medal mathematics highest honor that year he failed to win it again he was an intensely ambitious person he was extremely competitive and he was very bitter that uh uh he he he didn't get it at the time I I I had some recognition I was making some progress professionally but I wasn't really at the top I didn't have top level [Music] recognition he threw himself into solving the rean hypothesis the Holy Grail of mathematics the work was mentally and physically exhausting and ultimately proved futle he began to worry that his best years were behind him at the same time he learned that Alicia was [Music] pregnant a psychotic break is usually precipitated by some stressful experiences often these stressful experiences involve a demand that the person who who becomes psychotic take on greater responsibility below his Brash and confidence surface John Nash now hit another side of himself one filled with anxiety self-doubt even fear it would Mark the beginning of a strange and tragic [Music] metamorphosis on New Year's Eve 1958 the national has attended a costume party at the home of a colleague John went dressed as a baby he wore a diaper and spent much of the night curled up in Alicia's lap even to those used to his eccentricities it was a disturbing scene a few weeks later Nash rushed into the common room at Mi and claimed that powers from outer space were sending him coded messages in the New York Times another incident soon followed he interrupted a lecture to announce that he was on the cover of Life magazine disguised as Pope John the 23rd he knew this he said because 23 was his favorite prime [Music] number then he began noticing a curious pattern on the MIT campus men wearing red ties he was sure they were members of a secret communist organization when the University of Chicago offered him a prestigious position Nash turned it down he was already scheduled he said to become emperor of Antarctica John talked about the people from outer space who were destroying his career and the international organizations that were attacking him somebody you known for a long time to to hear this kind of news is uh very unsettling Tru his personality seemed to change in a period of a week or so it was very fast I mean you're you're seeing a mind disintegrating from F of you I felt uh shocked the math department chairman thought Nash was having a nervous breakdown and relieved him of his teaching duties in February Still Nash continued to unravel one night he painted black spots all over the bedroom wall Alicia tried to handle it herself but at a certain point it overwhelmed her and when she turned to a psychiatrist she was ultimately advised that he should be [Music] hospitalized here was this genius and you were going to clap him into a hospital where God knows what might happen I think it was very tough I didn't feel that I belonged locked up I I never went [Music] voluntarily Nash was taken to mlan hospital a private psychiatric facility outside Boston known for treating the wealthy and famous he was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and given an injection of thorine to calm him down his treatment consisted of psychoanalysis the staff called him professor in those days many doctors thought schizophrenia was related to problems in childhood problems in mothering they didn't know it was a real brain disease and it people are born with a vulnerability to that brain disorder conventionally we Define it as a severe mental illness characterized by hallucinations delusions or peculiar forms of thinking for example a schizophrenic may feel that when he looks at you he may believe that it's not himself who's looking at his own eyes some somehow someone else is actually having his experiences a delusional state of mind is like living a [Music] Dream well I knew where I was I was there in observation but I was able to think that I was like a victim of a [Music] conspiracy the delusions have often a cosmic quality a feeling of ominousness everything that happens around you takes on a a tremendous significance in manness I saw myself as some sort of of a messenger having a special function like the Muslim concept with Muhammad the messenger all someone who visited him in the hospital asked him how could you a mathematician someone who's committed to rationality how could you believe that aliens from outer space were communicating with you nasha's response was these ideas came to me the same way my mathematical ideas did so I believe [Music] them Virginia visited John at mlan but could hardly bear to see her son in such a state I broke her I guess was devastating you can imagine that every day she would wake up and every she would go to bed and she would have this honor Alicia urged his colleagues to visit hoping their support would help Jon get back on his feet all the mathematicians were very upset because this was a great genius that was lost he said Newman they are not going to let me out until I'm normal but that'll never be I never was I began to realize I would not be getting out of the hospital unless I conformed and behaved normally and so I the part I would do that is if I would be sweeping the delusions under a rug and then they were able to come out later on it could be triggered and I would move very quickly to accepting it again Nash rained a lawyer who secured his release after 50 days of hospitalization within weeks he resigned from MIT withdrew all the money from his pension fund and announced he was leaving for Europe Alicia who had given birth while JN was in mlan felt she had no choice but to go with him they left behind their newborn son with Alicia's [Music] mother in July 1959 the nashes arrived in Paris to find the city in turmoil the streets reverberated with strikes explosions and mass demonstrations against the nuclear arms race a week later Nash suddenly took off on his [Music] own he went to Luxembourg and announced he wanted to give up his American citizenship he was turned away I got to Geneva and I thought of a way of being a refugee they had a slogan City of Refuge I envisioned a hidden world where the the Communists and the anti-communists were really the same they were sort of schemers I had the idea that some of the people like Eisenhower and the pope and the powers that be might be unsympathetic to [Music] me these thoughts on the service are not rational but there could be a situation where there were things were not what they might seem if to be mad is to be in error there's a kind of contradiction there isn't there between what it is to be mad in the eyes of the world and what it is to have these experiences in which you're having a sense of Revelation and you're noticing features of the world that other people seem to be too stupid or too blind to [Music] recognize most of the time when he was trying to give up his citizenship he was being followed around by the naval atache who had was commission to get his passport back and give it to Alicia and so he chased him around Europe I went to the American Embassy in Paris and I asked for help I said I don't know what to do you know but I don't want him to get into trouble Nash wandered Europe for 9 months before Embassy officials arranged to have him deported French police seized him and took him to the airport Nash later claimed that he was sent back on a ship in Chains like a [Music] slave the nashes moved to Princeton to support her family Alicia took a job with a research division of RCA she hoped that with the help of the math Community they could start over again when John moved back to Princeton we offered him work with no real heavy responsibilties just to get him back into the society and those efforts foundered when he refused to sign W4 forms he just was he he was paranoid schizophrenic he he wouldn't sign a document for the government because he still thought there was a conspiracy there out there against him Nash was still in the grips of his illness he became obsessed with unrest in the Middle East and made countless phone calls to friends and family using fictitious names he would call me would you accept a collect call from some strange name and I didn't because I didn't want to validate that he was this other person [Music] one day he showed up on campus covered with scratches and visibly terrified Johan van nasau has been a bad boy he said they're going to come and get me [Music] now less than 2 years after his release from mlan Nash was hospitalized Again Alicia Virginia and his sister Martha committed him to Trenton State Hospital the former New Jersey Lunatic Asylum at this point we didn't know whether this is going to be a very long very expensive process and we had been advised that Trenton was a good hospital mlan hospital had been kind of a a country club Trenton was a crowded open Ward when he arrived at Trenton state was assigned sign a number and was mocked and told to sweep up and was a terrible thing when his colleagues heard where Nash was many were outraged who's going to figure out what is wrong with a genius there asked one it is in the National interest warned another that everything possible be done to protect Nas's exceptional mind Trenton state was known for its aggressive treatments including insulin coma therapy which by 1961 had been phased out in all but a few hospitals insulin coma was developed under the mistaken notion that schizophrenia was caused by a metabolic Problem by the way the body regulates glucose insulin coma was one of the more popular and unfortunately one of of the more notorious treatments in its [Music] day I don't remember all the details the sort of thing that uh like if you go under anesthesia you don't you remember only the process up to the [Music] anesthesia a nurse would wake patients early in the morning and give them an injection of insulin [Music] their blood sugar would drop and soon they would be comos some patients would suffer spontaneous seizures insulin coma deliberately puts the body into total shock this was done under supervised circumstances because if you do that too aggressively you can die I remember some of the surrounding events there would be a group of people that would be getting it and then afterwards they would go out on the grounds and pass some time and drink sugar water I got the thinking of the cruelty to animals I became a vegetarian at the time that I was in the uh uh tral hospital I was sort of thought that one could protest against this sort of treatment Nash endured insulin treatments 5 days a week for 6 weeks his symptoms diminished and after 6 months of confinement he was finally discharged no one knew what the long-term effects of his treatment might be he came to visit us and it was after this awful treatment and he looked like he had been battered and and thre some devastating something and and spoke of it a little bit himself and it was you know it was kind of heartbreaking he said these treat treatments that he had gone through had wiped out his early memory so I think what he was doing he was was visiting me and different people to see if he could get his memory [Laughter] back in 1961 Nash was 33 and unemployed former Princeton colleagues secured him a research position and he managed to publish a paper on fluid d Dynamics his first piece of work in four years he seemed to be better but inside Nash felt a sense of loss rational thought he wrote imposes a limit on a person's relation to the cosmos he later called his remission periods interludes of enforced rationality to some extent sanity is a form of conformity people are always selling the idea that people who have mental illness are suffering but it's really not so simple uh I think uh menal illness or Madness can be an escape also the following summer he left for Europe alone once again obsessed with Asylum before long friends and family began receiving letters and postcards it wasn't the type of letter you would expect to receive from a father how you doing or what you been up to it was unbelievable how these things were supposed to mean something they were frightening in away the letters and they made use of all the things that had been in his life mathematics was a kind of numerology and politics mixed with [Music] paranoia distraught after 3 years of turmoil Alicia filed for divorce in December 1962 her complaint charged that Nash resented her for committing him and had deserted her without [Laughter] support in 1961 Nash was 33 and unemployed former Princeton colleagues secured him a research position and he managed to publish a paper on fluid dynamics his first piece of work in four years he seemed to be better but inside Nash felt a sense of loss rational thought he wrote imposes a limit on a person's relation to the cosmos he later called his remission periods interludes of enforced ration personality to some extent sanity is a form of Conformity people are always selling the idea that people who have mental illness are suffering but it's really not so simple uh I think uh mental illness or Madness can be an escape [Music] also the following summer he left for Europe alone once again obsessed with Asylum before long friends and family began receiving letters and [Music] postcards it wasn't the type of letter you would expect to receive from a father how you doing or what you been up to it was unbelievable how these things were supposed to mean something there were frightening in a way the letters and they made use of all the things that had been in his life mathematics was a kind of numerology and politics mixed with paranoia [Music] distraught after 3 years of turmoil Alicia filed for divorce in December 1962 her complaint charged that Nash resented her for committing him and had deserted her without support mathematicians from MIT in Princeton found Nash an academic position in Boston they got him an apartment and arranged for him to meet weekly with a psychiatrist who prescribed antipsychotic medication gradually he seemed to improve he was pretty sane recall a colleague he was a much nicer person the old ego stuff was gone he began seeing elanar and their son John again we had gotten into a patent of going out every Saturday I started to grow more fond of him as he was around more and then he went as quickly as he came so less than a year after moving to Boston Nash stopped taking his medication and his symptoms resurfaced these medicines interfere with Vitality with drive with thinking so the price that many patients had to pay from being on these medicines was that they felt lifeless like it takes away their soul well he was afraid of anything would alter the quality of his mind and as anyone doesn't want to be forced to do something they don't want to do but they don't choose to do and John had always been very independent about what he chose to do his delusions were now joined by A Chorus of voices in his head the kinds of hallucinations that are most common in schizophrenia are auditory hallucinations of voices of a certain kind one kind would be two or more voices which are talking about the ongoing behavior of the patient so if I were schizophrenic I might hear you know John and Mary saying okay so so why is Louie doing that now and then Mary would say to John oh he's just a jerk he always does that kind of thing they go back and forth but sort of a commentary often critical on my ongoing Behavior you're really talking to yourself it's what the voice is [Music] are he said he understood that there was something that went on between people that was alien to him he was sort of enclosed in a bubble that he felt lonely in 1970 Alicia Nash had a change of heart she felt John's repeated hospitalizations had been a mistake Alicia decided to let him move back in with her and promised never to commit him again I didn't think he should just be hospitalized in an institution shouldn't left there and I just felt it was best for him to to be on the outside she took him back not as her husband but as somebody who needed help and nobody else would have him giving him shelter and meals and protection made a tremendous difference in his well-being if she hadn't taken him in he would have wound up on the streets I think that Alicia saved his life Princeton students began noticing a strange sight on campus entire blackboards filled with minutely written formulas and secret codes rumors spread it was the work of a mysterious figure who wore red sneakers and kept to himself they called him the Phantom there were all kinds of myths about him the students would tell each other that he had gone mad because of a too difficult problem he tried to crack or after a rival beat him to the punch and students were aware that the powers that be were protecting him from time to time you would see in your office you know under the door sort of huge number of sheets that's been worked out the night before uh computer the probabilities of certain coincidences very detailed computations he was into Prov the existence of God I felt that I might get a divine revelation by seeing a certain number a great coincidence could be interpreted as something a message from heaven I did see him several times he didn't recognize me I didn't press the matter I didn't have the sense I could have any contact with so I didn't try year after year for more than a decade the Phantom roamed the Princeton campus unaware that the work he had done as a student had finally sparked a revolution [Music] beginning in the 1960s economists began to successfully apply gain Theory to real life situations mergers strikes collective bargaining these situations of conflict and cooperation are part of the backbone of practical economics auctions Farm subsidies monetary policy International Trade all were now seen as strategic gains by the late 1970s Game Theory had become one of the foundations of modern economics and at the center was the Nash equilibrium there not more than 10 ideas in the postwar period which we could say are equivalent it had a huge impact in economics it made economics a much more useful subject I knew it was good work but you cannot know how much something will be appreciated in the future it's you don't have that Crystal Ball by the 1980s economists expected that game theory would be recognized with the Nobel Prize year after year it didn't happen the committee in stockhom could not conceivably dream of giving a Nobel Prize if they couldn't include John Nash as one of the deserving uh people members of the Nobel committee worried that Nash was unstable and wouldn't be able to handle the pressures of the ceremony some even feared he might do something that would embarrass the academy and tarnish the [Music] [Music] prize beginning sometime in the 1980s after three decades of struggling with mental illness John Nash experienced his second transformation I don't really remember the chronology very well exactly when I moved from one typ of thinking to another I began arguing with the concept of the voices and ultimately I began rejecting them deciding not to listen his descent into madness had been sudden his Reawakening was gradual almost imperceptible a portion of schizophrenics after a long period of time often do seem to get better and how that occurs remains a mystery slowly he became more engaged and Lucid word of his remarkable recovery spread those around him assumed new anti psychotic drugs were helping but Nash had stopped taking medication in 1970 I said John how in the devil have you recovered he said I wi it I decided I was going to think rationally he has said that he more or less put his hallucinations aside like a conscious decision I mentioned that to somebody and she said well why didn't didn't he do it sooner the fact that people did not abandon him that there were people who treated him like a human being made it possible for him to reemerge this wonderful thing that happened to John could only happen in this little mathematical community that is very very tough Toler an of certain aberration and also at the same time incredibly uh admiring of uh gift or genius that was what was important about Nash in that world not that he was [Music] Ill two American professors and a German researcher have been awarded the Nobel prize in economics the three winners of today's Nobel Prize played Major roles in bringing the the principles of Game Theory to economics Princeton's John Nash was cited for developing what has become known as the Nash equilibrium pioneering theory about the point at which conflicts get resolved under the the my wife said John Nash you don't think that's the John Nash that we know I didn't know John was still alive I remember clearly I heard it on the radio and that's John and I I cried and all I could think was I wish my parents could know this on December 10th 1994 at the age of 66 John Nash received the Nobel Prize in Stockholm Dr John Nash your analysis of equili noncooperative games and all your other contributions to Game Theory have had a profound effect on the way economic theory has developed in the last two decades I was delighted I was absolutely ecstatic and so was my wife we were so it was so wonderful jubilant we we we danced around our kitchen I mean it was such a marvelous Vindication that after all this time this this incredible acknowledgement was great [Applause] he shined very brightly as a young man then he had his illness and is now a very pleasant accomplished gentleman it feels bright somehow John John Nash lives in Princeton with Alicia and their son Johnny who is also a mathematician and suffers from schizophrenia after a long estrangement Nash has reconnected with his eldest son John [Music] steer in the spring of 2001 38 years after their divorce John and Alicia remarried at Princeton Nash has returned once again to his work in mathematics I think it teaches us that we have to appreciate the particular talents of people who may be very eccentric and look at things in very peculiar ways those are often the people who will really have the most stunning insights here was someone who had been lost I think that's the inspiration that people can triumph over this disease I think it's incredibly [Music] inspiring I'm not thinking anything crazy but there are different possibilities I don't know what the future holds exactly even if it's not such a long future for me of course the future in general is presumably long unless things really go bad or unless some miracle [Music] happens [Music]