"In this biography, Sylvia Nasar re-creates the life of a mathematical genius whose brilliant career was cut short by schizophrenia and who, after three decades of devastating mental illness, miraculously recovered and was honored with a Nobel Prize." "A Beautiful Mind traces the meteoric rise of John Forbes Nash, Jr., from his lonely childhood in West Virginia to his student years at Princeton, where he encountered Albert Einstein, John von Neumann,...

"Called 'the most remarkable mathematician of the second half of the century, ' Nash suffered a devastating breakdown at the age of thirty. He suddenly claimed that aliens were sending him messages, became obsessed with secret numbers and saw conspiracies all around him. Diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, Nash spent a decade in and out of mental hospitals, surviving with the support of his wife and former colleagues. During that time, a mathematical...