Book summary

This biography analyzes how Nobel Prize-winning mathematician John Nash's eccentric personality helped him to develop revolutionary mathematical processes, and chronicles the transformation of this prolific eccentricity into a 30-year bout of paranoid schizophrenia and eventual recovery in 1990. Nasar provides insights into this illness and its devastating effects through Nash's letters, interviews with his colleagues, and her own compilation of research in the field. A New York Times Notable Book for 1998.

Media reviews

"[This book] might be compared to a Rembrandt portrait, filled with somber shadows and radiant light effects, for it is the story of a dark madness illuminated by a man's genius....Nasar has delved deeply into Nash's year-by-year experiences. The detail does not weigh the story down though. Rather, her exhaustive research has been transformed into novelistic narrative....Superbly written and eminently fascinating, A BEAUTIFUL MIND is simply a beautiful book."