NEW YORK
Professor John Nash, winner of the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences in this November 8, 2011, file photo. Nash and his wife, Alicia, were killed on May 23, 2015, when the taxi they were riding struck a guard rail on the New Jersey Turnpike, according to New Jersey State police. Nash's life was the subject of the Oscar-winning film "A Beauitiful Mind." Nash was 86; his wife was 82. PHOTO | AFP
Nobel Prize-winning US mathematician John Nash, who inspired the film "A Beautiful Mind," was killed with his wife in a New Jersey car crash.
Nash,
86, and his 82-year-old wife Alicia were riding in a taxi on Saturday
when the accident took place, State Police Sergeant Gregory Williams
told AFP.
"The taxi passengers were ejected," Williams said, adding that they were both killed.
The
Princeton University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
mathematician is best known for his contribution to game theory — the
study of decision-making — which won him the Nobel economics prize in
1994.
His life story formed the basis
of the Oscar-winning 2001 film "A Beautiful Mind" in which actor
Russell Crowe played the genius, who struggled with mental illness.
MENTAL ILLNESS
"Stunned...
my heart goes out to John & Alicia & family. An amazing
partnership. Beautiful minds, beautiful hearts," Crowe said on Twitter.
Ron Howard, who won the Oscar for best director for the film, tweeted that "it was an honour telling part of their story."
Nash's
life took a sharp turn in early 1959 when he began suffering from
"mental disturbances" that caused him to resign his faculty position at
MIT.
The schizophrenic delusions would end up affecting not only his career but also his marriage to Alicia, whom he wed in 1957.
The
couple divorced in the early 1960s, but remained in contact and
remarried decades later in 2001. By the time Nash received his Nobel
Prize, his delusions had decreased.
"I
am still making the effort and it is conceivable that with the gap
period of about 25 years of partially deluded thinking providing a sort
of vacation, my situation may be atypical," Nash said in an
autobiographical description, written at the time of his Nobel Prize
award in 1994.
"It did happen that
when I had been long enough hospitalized that I would finally renounce
my delusional hypothesis and revert to thinking of myself as a human of
more conventional circumstances and return to mathematical research."
Earlier
this month, Nash and mathematician Louis Nirenberg received Norway's
prestigious Abel Prize for their contributions to the theory of
nonlinear partial differential equations (PDEs) and its applications to
geometric analysis.
"John's
remarkable achievements inspired generations of mathematicians,
economists and scientists who were influenced by his brilliant,
groundbreaking work in game theory," Princeton president Christopher
Eisgruber said in a statement Sunday.
Greek
Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis tweeted that "reading your work was
inspirational. Meeting you, and spending time together, was an unearned
bonus. Farewell John Nash Jr."
TRAGIC CRASH
Nash
was born in Bluefield, West Virginia on June 13, 1928 to John, an
electrical engineer, and his wife, Virginia, a former school teacher.
He
went on to study mathematics at what is now Carnegie Mellon University
and received a graduate degree from Princeton, where he said he first
became interested in game theory.
Nash
and his wife were involved in the deadly crash at 4:30 pm (2030 GMT) on
the New Jersey Turnpike near the township of Monroe, after the taxi the
couple was riding in attempted to pass another vehicle, lost control
and struck a guard rail and another car.
US media reported that Nash and his wife were possibly not wearing seatbelts at the time.
The taxi driver was airlifted to the hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.
A passenger in the other car was taken to the hospital with neck and back pain, said Williams, the police sergeant.
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