WORLD FAMOUS ECONOMISTS AND THEIR CONTRIBUTIONS - JOHN FORBES NASH Jr.

JOHN FORBES NASH, JR.

           1928–2015

·     John Forbes Nash Jr. was an American mathematician who made fundamental contributions to game theory, differential geometry, and the study of partial differential equations.

·    Nash's work has provided insight into the factors that govern chance and 

    decision-making inside complex systems found in everyday life.

·  His theories are widely used in economics. Serving as a Senior Research Mathematician at Princeton University during the latter part of his life, he shared the 1994 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences with game theorists Reinhard Selten and John Harsanyi.

·   In 2015, he also shared the Abel Prize with Louis Nirenberg for his work on nonlinear partial differential equations.

·     John Nash is the only one to be awarded both the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences and the Abel Prize

·  In 1959, Nash began showing clear signs of mental illness, and spent several years at psychiatric hospitals being treated for paranoid schizophrenia. After 1970, his condition slowly improved, allowing him to return to academic work by the mid-1980s.

·  His struggles with his illness and his recovery became the basis for Sylvia Nasar's biography, A Beautiful Mind, as well as a film of the same name starring Russell Crowe as Nash

·     Nash earned a Ph.D. degree in 1950 with a 28-page dissertation on non-cooperative games. The thesis, written under the supervision of doctoral advisor Albert W. Tucker, contained the definition and properties of the Nash equilibrium. A crucial concept in non-cooperative games, it won Nash the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1994

·    Whereas the groundbreaking game theory academic work of the Nobel laureate influenced so many fields including politics (electoral and legislative rules), sports (soccer penalty kicks, football run/pass balance), and international relations (nuclear deterrence), it left an indelible mark in the field of economics, completely changing how economists think about how individuals and economic agents behave by considering how they respond to the behavior and incentives of other individuals.

SOME OF HIS FAMOUS QUOTES

·         I knew it was good work, but you cannot know how much something will be appreciated in the future. You don't have that crystal ball.

·         “You don't have to be a mathematician to have a feel for numbers”

·       [W]hen I started thinking irrationally, I imagined myself as really on a Number 1 level. I was the most important person of the world.

·   People are always selling the idea that people with mental illness are suffering. I think madness can be an escape. If things are not so good, you maybe want to imagine something better.

·     Somebody suggested that I was a prodigy. Another time it was suggested that I should be called “bug brains,” because I had ideas, but they were sort of buggy or not perfectly sound… To some extent, sanity is a form of conformity. And to some extent, people who are insane are non-conformists…

·      “I've always believed in numbers and the equations and logics that lead to reason. But after a lifetime of such pursuits, I ask, "What truly is logic? Who decides reason?" My quest has taken me through the physical, the metaphysical, the delusional -- and back. And I have made the most important discovery of my career, the most important discovery of my life: It is only in the mysterious equations of love that any logic or reasons can be found”