for
the Amherst campus of the University of Massachusetts
October
18 , 2002
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Nobelist John Nash to speak  rinceton
University mathematician John Nash, who shared the 1994 Nobel Prize
in economics for his work on game theory, will present the Economics
Department's annual Gamble Lecture on Thursday, Oct. 24 at 4 p.m.
in the Student Union Ballroom.Nash will speak on "Ideal Money." Regarded as one of the most brilliant mathematicians of his generation, Nash spiraled into schizophrenia, a battle recounted in the Academy Award-winning movie, "A Beautiful Mind," and the book of the same name by Sylvia Nasar. Born in Bluefield, W.Va., Nash completed his B.S. and M.S. at Carnegie Mellon University before beginning his doctoral studies at Princeton. When Nash applied to graduate school at Prince-ton in 1948, his old Carnegie Tech professor, R.J. Duffin, wrote only one line on his letter of recommendation: "This man is a genius." That prediction was borne out when, at the age of 21, Nash completed his 27-page dissertation for strategic non-cooperative games. By the 1980s, game theory was underpinning a large part of economics. His contributions to mathematics are also considered remarkable. As an undergraduate, he inadvertently (and independently) proved Brouwer's fixed point theorem. Later on, he went on to break one of Riemann's most perplexing mathematical conundrums. From then on, Nash provided breakthrough after breakthrough in mathematics. In 1958, on the threshold of his career, Nash was struck by paranoid schizophrenia. He lost his job at MIT in 1959, a year after he tenured at the age of 29, and was virtually incapacitated by the disease for the next two decades or so. He roamed about Europe and America, finally, returning to Princeton where he became known as "the Phantom of Fine Hall," the building where he maintains an office. When the Nobel Prize committee began debating a prize for game theory, Nash's name came up but was dismissed, since the prize could not go to someone who was mentally ill. But in 1994, with Nash in remission from schizophrenia, he shared the Nobel in economics for work done some 45 years previously. Nash shared the prize with John C. Harsanyi and Reinhard Selten, for what he claims was his "most trivial work." The Nobel Foundation credited Nash with introducing the distinction between cooperative games, in which binding agreements can be made, and non-cooperative games, where binding agreements are not feasible. Nash developed an equilibrium concept for non-cooperative games that later came to be called Nash equilibrium. The Gamble Lecture Series was endowed in the honor of professor Philip Gamble, who joined the faculty in 1935 and chaired the Economics Department for many years. |
