John Forbes Nash, Jr. (1928-2015)
May 24, 2015 8:02 AM Subscribe
John Nash, notable mathematician, died yesterday, with his wife Alicia, in a taxi accident.
He received the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1994 for his contributions to game theory, in particular his discovery of the Nash equilibrium.
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He features in one of my favorite xkcd.
posted by khonostrov at 8:08 AM on May 24, 2015 [8 favorites]
He features in one of my favorite xkcd.
posted by khonostrov at 8:08 AM on May 24, 2015 [8 favorites]
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posted by pemberkins at 8:09 AM on May 24, 2015
posted by pemberkins at 8:09 AM on May 24, 2015
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Besides the major contribution to game theory, I will always remember John Nash for his 1995 letter to the NSA where he not only introduces the basic ideas behind complexity theory, with which theoretical computer scientists occupy themselves with to this day, but also its applications in cryptography. These ideas are some of the building blocks of current secure communication over the Internet today.
posted by maskd at 8:09 AM on May 24, 2015 [12 favorites]
Besides the major contribution to game theory, I will always remember John Nash for his 1995 letter to the NSA where he not only introduces the basic ideas behind complexity theory, with which theoretical computer scientists occupy themselves with to this day, but also its applications in cryptography. These ideas are some of the building blocks of current secure communication over the Internet today.
posted by maskd at 8:09 AM on May 24, 2015 [12 favorites]
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posted by limeonaire at 8:14 AM on May 24, 2015
posted by limeonaire at 8:14 AM on May 24, 2015
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posted by lalochezia at 8:23 AM on May 24, 2015
posted by lalochezia at 8:23 AM on May 24, 2015
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posted by my-username at 8:25 AM on May 24, 2015
posted by my-username at 8:25 AM on May 24, 2015
I read the news just a while ago and saw that they were ejected from the car when it crashed. Such an avoidable way to die for such a brilliant man.
Please, everyone, use your seatbelt even in a taxi, even in the back seat.
posted by CrazyLemonade at 8:28 AM on May 24, 2015 [24 favorites]
Please, everyone, use your seatbelt even in a taxi, even in the back seat.
posted by CrazyLemonade at 8:28 AM on May 24, 2015 [24 favorites]
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posted by oceanjesse at 8:31 AM on May 24, 2015
posted by oceanjesse at 8:31 AM on May 24, 2015
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Please, please wear your seatbelts.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 8:32 AM on May 24, 2015 [2 favorites]
Please, please wear your seatbelts.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 8:32 AM on May 24, 2015 [2 favorites]
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posted by busted_crayons at 8:40 AM on May 24, 2015
posted by busted_crayons at 8:40 AM on May 24, 2015
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posted by Joey Michaels at 8:43 AM on May 24, 2015
posted by Joey Michaels at 8:43 AM on May 24, 2015
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posted by badmoonrising at 8:46 AM on May 24, 2015
posted by badmoonrising at 8:46 AM on May 24, 2015
To quote someone on twitter: "it's a non-zero-sum day where we've all lost".
posted by idiopath at 8:50 AM on May 24, 2015 [11 favorites]
posted by idiopath at 8:50 AM on May 24, 2015 [11 favorites]
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The Nashes were family friends, but we've fallen out of touch over the past few years. Sad to hear this.
posted by schmod at 9:03 AM on May 24, 2015
The Nashes were family friends, but we've fallen out of touch over the past few years. Sad to hear this.
posted by schmod at 9:03 AM on May 24, 2015
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And yet, of all possible ways for a 60+ year marriage to end, dying together in an accident is not the worse.
posted by Scram at 9:04 AM on May 24, 2015 [16 favorites]
And yet, of all possible ways for a 60+ year marriage to end, dying together in an accident is not the worse.
posted by Scram at 9:04 AM on May 24, 2015 [16 favorites]
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posted by JoeXIII007 at 9:49 AM on May 24, 2015
posted by JoeXIII007 at 9:49 AM on May 24, 2015
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posted by a lungful of dragon at 9:54 AM on May 24, 2015
posted by a lungful of dragon at 9:54 AM on May 24, 2015
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posted by Smart Dalek at 9:56 AM on May 24, 2015
posted by Smart Dalek at 9:56 AM on May 24, 2015
of all possible ways for a 60+ year marriage to end
It's more complicated than that, because why wouldn't every part of Nash's life be complicated?
John and Alicia divorced in the 60s due to his mental illness. He later moved back in with her as his more-or-less caretaker, and following his more-or-less recovery they remarried in the 90s/00s.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 10:16 AM on May 24, 2015 [7 favorites]
It's more complicated than that, because why wouldn't every part of Nash's life be complicated?
John and Alicia divorced in the 60s due to his mental illness. He later moved back in with her as his more-or-less caretaker, and following his more-or-less recovery they remarried in the 90s/00s.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 10:16 AM on May 24, 2015 [7 favorites]
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posted by Gymnopedist at 10:27 AM on May 24, 2015
posted by Gymnopedist at 10:27 AM on May 24, 2015
It sounds like despite their struggles with his illness, they lived about as full and fascinating and successful a pair of lives as you could ask for. You will be remembered, Nashes.
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posted by Rock Steady at 10:31 AM on May 24, 2015 [4 favorites]
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posted by Rock Steady at 10:31 AM on May 24, 2015 [4 favorites]
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posted by dirigibleman at 10:45 AM on May 24, 2015
posted by dirigibleman at 10:45 AM on May 24, 2015
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posted by Navelgazer at 11:20 AM on May 24, 2015
posted by Navelgazer at 11:20 AM on May 24, 2015
As a student of mathematical biology, Nash's name comes up fairly often in my studies, and the story of his life has helped me cope with the reality of being a math major with severe mental illness. Thank you, Dr. Nash.
posted by triceryclops at 11:23 AM on May 24, 2015 [20 favorites]
posted by triceryclops at 11:23 AM on May 24, 2015 [20 favorites]
It sounds like despite their struggles with his illness, they lived about as full and fascinating and successful a pair of lives as you could ask for.
Just for the record, I didn't mean to imply otherwise. It's just that of course his life couldn't be that simple because he's one of those people whose life is fractally complex.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 12:22 PM on May 24, 2015 [1 favorite]
Just for the record, I didn't mean to imply otherwise. It's just that of course his life couldn't be that simple because he's one of those people whose life is fractally complex.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 12:22 PM on May 24, 2015 [1 favorite]
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posted by madcaptenor at 12:36 PM on May 24, 2015
posted by madcaptenor at 12:36 PM on May 24, 2015
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posted by spinifex23 at 1:46 PM on May 24, 2015
posted by spinifex23 at 1:46 PM on May 24, 2015
27 pages? Jesus. The shorter a dissertation is, the more brilliant it is.
posted by bim at 1:53 PM on May 24, 2015
posted by bim at 1:53 PM on May 24, 2015
My father, who knew both Nashes when they were at MIT, refused to see A Beautiful Mind because he thought it would be too heartbreaking to bear. He would be distressed to know that lack of seat belts caused (or, at least, contributed to) their deaths, but he would be utterly anguished if it turned out that they ignored safety statistics and chose not to wear them.
posted by carmicha at 2:49 PM on May 24, 2015 [2 favorites]
posted by carmicha at 2:49 PM on May 24, 2015 [2 favorites]
For elderly people the whole thing of fastening your seatbelts is awkward and annoying--especially so in the back seats where they get problems reaching and seeing the clasps. And sometimes they perceive/rationalize it as not wanting to make a fuss about it. So I think game theory would surely have a few choice analytical insights to make about the very design (or lack thereof) of seat belts, the interaction with safety laws, social culture around safety, and so on.
I've only ever seen him on campus once, walking, alone, slowly, but peacefully, in broad daylight, across the front of my building. Whenever my friends spoke of Nash—and of course this brings in an element of self-selection—the context of someone recently sighting him walking somewhere anotherwhere invariably crops up. In retrospect, these two details give me the impression that he was someone who understood and appreciated the virtues of going somewhere by your own two feet.
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posted by polymodus at 3:54 PM on May 24, 2015 [2 favorites]
I've only ever seen him on campus once, walking, alone, slowly, but peacefully, in broad daylight, across the front of my building. Whenever my friends spoke of Nash—and of course this brings in an element of self-selection—the context of someone recently sighting him walking somewhere anotherwhere invariably crops up. In retrospect, these two details give me the impression that he was someone who understood and appreciated the virtues of going somewhere by your own two feet.
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posted by polymodus at 3:54 PM on May 24, 2015 [2 favorites]
At 86, I hope that I go flying out a window and die instantly, with my beloved beside me (if that's what she wants). I'm not saying that's what they wanted, but it's a reasonable way to die, from my personal perspective.
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On a different note:
I am curious to know about his long-term functionality after his diagnosis. The clip that NPR played this morning, a speech he made in the last 10 years or so, didn't give me a sense of his cognitive capacities later in life. I know that schizophrenia is associated with dementia later in life.
posted by latkes at 4:18 PM on May 24, 2015 [1 favorite]
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On a different note:
I am curious to know about his long-term functionality after his diagnosis. The clip that NPR played this morning, a speech he made in the last 10 years or so, didn't give me a sense of his cognitive capacities later in life. I know that schizophrenia is associated with dementia later in life.
posted by latkes at 4:18 PM on May 24, 2015 [1 favorite]
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posted by aroweofshale at 5:44 PM on May 24, 2015
posted by aroweofshale at 5:44 PM on May 24, 2015
Apparently, the Nashes had just returned from an award ceremony/celebration in Norway for the Abel prize.
posted by ZeusHumms at 6:23 PM on May 24, 2015
posted by ZeusHumms at 6:23 PM on May 24, 2015
A friend was just telling me he used to work at a Borders in central NJ where Nash had been a regular, and without knowing his name, had been one of my friend's favorite customers. He'd known Nash went there but had never seen a photo until after the accident. When he saw it he made the connection, and said he genuinely found Nash very nice as a person.
posted by graymouser at 6:36 PM on May 24, 2015 [2 favorites]
posted by graymouser at 6:36 PM on May 24, 2015 [2 favorites]
My old university professor lives in Oslo, and was mentioning that John Nash was feted many times over there in the last one week, having won the Abel Prize. Notable that he won it not for the Nash Equilibrium which made him famous, but for proving that "a Riemannian manifold can always be 'embedded' as a subset of a (possibly much higher-dimensional) Euclidean space" (Nature), and thus creating new ways of solving partial differential equations.
Or to put it more finely, from the perspective of mathematics, is " incomparably greater than what he has done in economics, by many orders of magnitude. It was an incredible change in attitude of how you think." Essentially, he (and his co-winner) combined partial differential equations and abstract geometry in a way that was not thought possible before.
posted by the cydonian at 9:32 PM on May 24, 2015 [8 favorites]
Or to put it more finely, from the perspective of mathematics, is " incomparably greater than what he has done in economics, by many orders of magnitude. It was an incredible change in attitude of how you think." Essentially, he (and his co-winner) combined partial differential equations and abstract geometry in a way that was not thought possible before.
posted by the cydonian at 9:32 PM on May 24, 2015 [8 favorites]
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posted by LobsterMitten at 10:32 PM on May 24, 2015
posted by LobsterMitten at 10:32 PM on May 24, 2015
So very sad. My friend said she passed the accident coming home on the turnpike, but did not know what it was or who was in it until she got home. She mentioned how unusual it was to see a taxi on the Jersey Turnpike, especially one all smashed up.
posted by mermayd at 4:52 AM on May 25, 2015
posted by mermayd at 4:52 AM on May 25, 2015
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posted by maggiemaggie at 5:15 PM on May 25, 2015
posted by maggiemaggie at 5:15 PM on May 25, 2015
On a different note:
I am curious to know about his long-term functionality after his diagnosis. The clip that NPR played this morning, a speech he made in the last 10 years or so, didn't give me a sense of his cognitive capacities later in life. I know that schizophrenia is associated with dementia later in life.
He still seemed very sharp up until his death. While in Norway, he also met world chess champion Magnus Carlsen, where he quipped that he did not expect to be meeting Justin Bieber.
posted by gyc at 1:06 PM on May 26, 2015 [2 favorites]
I am curious to know about his long-term functionality after his diagnosis. The clip that NPR played this morning, a speech he made in the last 10 years or so, didn't give me a sense of his cognitive capacities later in life. I know that schizophrenia is associated with dementia later in life.
He still seemed very sharp up until his death. While in Norway, he also met world chess champion Magnus Carlsen, where he quipped that he did not expect to be meeting Justin Bieber.
posted by gyc at 1:06 PM on May 26, 2015 [2 favorites]
Why is it that logicians (Kurt Godel, for example) and mathematicians tend to loose their marbles? Please tell me. I really want to know.
posted by rankfreudlite at 3:20 PM on May 26, 2015
posted by rankfreudlite at 3:20 PM on May 26, 2015
Why is it that logicians (Kurt Godel, for example) and mathematicians tend to loose their marbles? Please tell me. I really want to know.
I am a mathematician and I know lots of them, and I'd be surprised if it were actually the case that mathematicians experience mental illness with higher frequency than the general population. There is a pervasive myth about this based on a few high-profile cases and unfortunate media portrayals, is my guess. (Witness the appallingly silly "Numb3rs" and "Good Will Hunting", the latter of which I'd imagine gives mental health professionals legitimate cause to complain, too.)
posted by busted_crayons at 4:12 PM on May 26, 2015 [3 favorites]
I am a mathematician and I know lots of them, and I'd be surprised if it were actually the case that mathematicians experience mental illness with higher frequency than the general population. There is a pervasive myth about this based on a few high-profile cases and unfortunate media portrayals, is my guess. (Witness the appallingly silly "Numb3rs" and "Good Will Hunting", the latter of which I'd imagine gives mental health professionals legitimate cause to complain, too.)
posted by busted_crayons at 4:12 PM on May 26, 2015 [3 favorites]
I'm going to ask what any good statistician would, which is: what's the base rate? With figures of 25%-50% of people suffering from mental illness at some point in their lives, it doesn't seem very remarkable that some mathematicians would. Here's a blog looking at famous early logicians and finding 4 out of 48 definitely to have suffered from mental illness.
posted by topynate at 11:44 AM on May 27, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by topynate at 11:44 AM on May 27, 2015 [1 favorite]
topynate's comment is already excellent just for the "Bourbaki had multiple personality disorder" bit in the link :-)
posted by busted_crayons at 6:33 PM on May 27, 2015
posted by busted_crayons at 6:33 PM on May 27, 2015
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