John Nash, whose front-page New York Times obituary reported that he “was widely regarded as one of the great mathematicians of the 20th century,” was killed with his wife, Alicia, May 23, 2015, in a taxi crash on the New Jersey Turnpike. He was 86. They were returning to their home in Princeton Junction from Norway, where he was a co-recipient of the Abel Prize, a top award for mathematicians.
In 1948, Nash came to Princeton after graduating with bachelor’s and master’s degrees in mathematics from what is now Carnegie Mellon University. He received a Ph.D. in mathematics in 1950 with a dissertation on game theory (which in 1994 won him the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences). After Princeton, he became an instructor at MIT in 1951, earning a tenured position in 1958.
In 1957, Nash married Alicia de Lardé. He resigned from MIT in 1959, as an incapacitating mental illness led to hospitalization. Illness took its toll and divorce followed in 1963, with various hospitalizations until 1970. Paranoiac delusions continued for two decades, but Alicia stood by him, taking him into her home in 1970, and they remarried in 2001. Nash’s life and recovery were described in book and film, both titled A Beautiful Mind.
Nash is survived by two sons and a sister.
Graduate memorials are prepared by the APGA.