Book Review:
A Beautiful Mind by Sylvia Nasar. Simon & Schuster, 1998

This book is the biography of John Nash, a mathematician who won the Nobel Prize for Economics in 1994. It is of great interest to those in psychiatry because it is the story of a mathematical genius who spent about three decades of his life in a psychotic state. A gifted young man who was socially inept and frequently rude to others during his years as a student at Carnegie Tech and Princeton, he was able to solve mathematical problems that others considered very difficult or even impossible. At one point he sought an audience with Einstein to discuss a problem in quantum mechanics (and was told by Einstein to study more physics). Challenged later to prove the Riemann hypothesis (a problem that remains unsolved), he soon became delusional, and convinced that he had to seek asylum in Europe (which was denied by several countries). He ended up in several psychiatric hospitals in the early years of his illness, including McLean Hospital, where he met the famous poet, Robert Lowell. After returning from Europe he spent many years roaming the halls of Princeton, saved from homelessness by the kindness of many who knew him, and by his ex-wife (who accompanied him on his trip to Stockholm to receive the Nobel Prize for his early work in game therapy). Nash eventually recovered spontaneously, an event that occurs in some with schizophrenia in later life, and delivered a fine address in Stockholm. He's back at Princeton, and continues his mathematical work now (he has a web site, and loves computers now).

In all, this is a finely crafted, well-documented book. The author has gone to great lengths to get the stories of Nash, his ex-wife, and many of his associates past a present to put into the book. One wonders about "prodrome" of schizophrenia, and whether some of his behavior prior to his psychosis represented prodrome. I recommend this book highly, especially as a story of schizophrenia that has a happy ending.

--Larry S. Myers, M.D.

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