Sylvia Nasar

John Forbes Nash, Jr., a prodigy and legend by the age of thirty, dazzled the mathematical world by solving a series of deep problems deemed “impossible” by other mathematicians. But at the height of his fame, Nash suffered a catastrophic mental breakdown and began a harrowing descent into insanity, resigning his post at MIT, slipping into a series of bizarre delusions, and eventually becoming a dreamy, ghostlike figure at Princeton, scrawling...

In a sweeping narrative, the author of the mega-bestseller A Beautiful Mind takes us on a journey through modern history with the men and women who changed the lives of every single person on the planet. It's the epic story of the making of modern economics, and of how it rescued mankind from squalor and deprivation by placing its material fate in its own hands rather than in Fate. Nasar's account begins with Charles Dickens and Henry Mayhew observing...

John Nash, called "the most remarkable mathematician of the second half of the century," suffered a devastating breakdown at the age of thirty. He 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...