Asking for the ghost of Princeton--Nash's biography, text version

In this touching and vivid biography, Sylvia Nasa vividly recreates the life of a mathematical genius. His career was interrupted by schizophrenia, but after 30 years of devastating mental illness, he miraculously recovered and won the 1994 Nobel Prize in Economics for his groundbreaking work in game theory when he was young. award. This book traces the short but brilliant legendary life of John Forbes Nash Jr. before he was 30 years old. He solved a series of difficult problems recognized by the mathematical community and became a bright star. At the height of his fame, Nash suffered a catastrophic nervous breakdown and descended into horrific insanity. He resigned from his teaching position at MIT and indulged in a series of strange fantasies, culminating in a dreamy ghostly figure at Princeton who scrawled numerology nonsense on a blackboard. He was almost forgotten by the world—until he emerged from his madness and regained the world's attention. This book is an excellent biography and a fascinating account of the brilliant and fragile nature of genius. This book won the 1998 American Book Critics Circle Award for Biography and the 2000 American Joint Policy Committee on Mathematics Communication Award.

On March 25, 2002, the 74th Academy Awards came to an end. As expected, "A Beautiful Mind", a biographical film based on the true experience of John Forbes Nash Jr., a genius mathematician and winner of the 1994 Nobel Prize in Economics, It won 4 awards including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Supporting Actress.

The film’s popularity and consecutive awards have brought Nash’s name and his magical story into the attention of Chinese readers. The original Nash biographical literary work (Chinese translation of "The Ghost of Princeton--Nash Biography"), which had a mediocre sales, 》) also became popular.

This prodigy’s illness and recovery, as well as winning the Nobel Prize at the age of 66, can be regarded as a miracle. Nash's life was so wonderful and dramatic. And the beauty of human nature reflected in his mental journey is also quite eye-catching.

■Such a thing has never happened

At noon on October 12, 1994, the splendid conference hall of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences was filled with reporters and camera teams. At this time, the scene is already a bit chaotic, because this year's Nobel Prize in Economics, which everyone has been waiting for, has not been announced. By convention, the Nobel Prize press conference is always held after the formal voting and is always on time - starting at 11:30.

What happened today? It’s past 12 o’clock, and officials from the Academy of Sciences have still not shown up, and no one has come out to explain. Nothing like this has ever happened before. Reporters speculated that there must be differences of opinion on the candidates for the award.

In fact, in the summer of the previous year, rumors that the Nobel Prize in Economics might fall in the field of game theory had spread everywhere, and there were several candidates. Later I learned that the Economics Award Committee had indeed reached a consensus on one issue at that time, that is, it hoped to award the 1994 Nobel Prize in Economics to scholars in the field of game theory. Because this year happens to be the 50th anniversary of the publication of "Game Theory and Economic Behavior" co-authored by John von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern. Since the publication of this book, game theory has been further developed and improved by scholars, bringing profound changes and influences to modern economics, and has become a "profitable" knowledge in the business world. John Forbes Nash Jr. is a leader in the field of game theory. As early as the mid-1980s, his name had already appeared on a list of candidates for the Nobel Prize in Economics.

Ten years have passed by in a flash. This time, the economics awards committee began to consider Nash again. However, sharp and opposing opinions emerged within the committee during specific discussions. Opponents said: Nash's contribution was made a long time ago, and it is too mathematical. The more critical point is that he is still a psychopath with abnormal mind. It is also doubtful whether he can cope with the big scene of the award ceremony...

There is a strong smell of gunpowder in the confrontation. I won’t go into details about the debate, but let’s turn our attention back to the press conference that day: around 1 o’clock in the afternoon, the noisy crowd finally calmed down and stared at the Academy of Sciences officials who had just walked into the hall with bated breaths. . A few minutes later, they heard this passage from a press release read by the Secretary-General of the Academy of Sciences: ...John Forbes Nash, Jr., Princeton University, New Jersey...

■ "He always You have to do things your own way."

Because Nash suffered from schizophrenia as an adult, people always like to pursue: Did he receive any stimulation or abuse in his childhood? Others have noticed that many great scientists and philosophers have similar personalities: eccentric and withdrawn; while emotional indifference and introversion seem to be particularly conducive to scientific creativity, just as rapid changes in mood may sometimes create artistic masterpieces.

So, what exactly is Nash's situation? Sylvia Nassa's biographical work "The Ghost of Princeton: The Biography of Nash" (the award-winning film "A Beautiful Mind" was adapted from this book) depicts a very complete image of Nash.

Nash was born on June 13, 1928 in Bluefield, West Virginia, USA. His parents were a devoted couple with similar interests. My father, who studied electronic engineering, worked for a power company and was very interested in technical fields and natural problems. My mother, who liked reading and teaching and knew several foreign languages, worked as a teacher. After getting married, she resigned from the public service and became a housewife.

Nash and his sister Martha, who is two years younger than him, live in a warm and harmonious family. Their parents take great care of the two little guys and are full of love. Nash doesn't look like a genius, but he is indeed a bit smart and full of curiosity. However, he is somewhat withdrawn and introverted, not very gregarious, and has no close friends. This is in sharp contrast to the extroverted Martha. When his sister was soaking in the swimming pool, or playing games or fighting with her friends, Nash often hid aside and played with his own toy airplane and a car made of matchboxes.

Elementary school teachers didn’t think highly of Nash. They said he had wild ideas, didn't pay attention to lectures, and didn't know how to do his homework. His fourth-grade report card showed his worst grades in math and music. In his comments, the teacher warned him to "work harder, change his study habits, and abide by the rules and regulations." During that period, Nash's best friends were probably books. He likes to stay alone in the house quietly with his head buried in a book or magazine. He read and reread the "Compton Illustrated Encyclopedia" his parents bought him and learned a lot from it. He was also keen on experimenting. When he was 12 years old, he turned his room into a laboratory filled with electronic components. He used the scientific principles he learned and used simple tools to perform some tricks, which often frightened his friends.

Although Nash's parents knew that he was unusual and intelligent, they were deeply worried about his withdrawn and reserved personality. They wanted their son to be "well-rounded" and did not want him to stay in the house all day and indulge in his hobbies and "inventions." For this reason, my father often took Nash and Martha for "internships" when he drove out on Sundays to check power lines. He always patiently answered Nash's questions about electricity, geology, weather, astronomy, etc. Her mother insisted that Martha introduce Nash into her circle of friends, even as a girlfriend. But Martha is not very happy to introduce her somewhat eccentric brother to everyone. In order to make his mother happy, Nash obediently went to the Boy Scout camp, dance school, Bible reading class, and used his summer vacation to work in a newspaper office. He even accepted Martha's date with a girl arranged by her mother.

However, Nash didn't make any friends at all, and his social skills didn't improve much. In his opinion, those things that make his peers excited and fun are actually boring and boring, and will only prevent him from concentrating on reading books and doing experiments. Once, when he went to his father's workplace for a dinner with his family, he became obsessed with the elevator. As a result, he almost stayed in it and went up and down the whole night until the iron thing could no longer operate, which made his parents very embarrassed.

"Nash is always different. He always has to do things his own way." Martha said of her brother as an adult. In high school, Nash had this "ability": when the teacher struggled to make a reluctant and lengthy proof, he could often tell everyone that it didn't have to be so complicated, and only two or three wonderful steps could solve the problem.

■He spent most of his time thinking

In terms of mathematics, Nash’s ancestors did not show any signs of genius; in his family education, mathematics also Not that it matters. Nash mentioned in his autobiography that when he was about 13 years old, he read the book "Mathematical Elite" written by Bell and discovered a mysterious kingdom composed of mathematical symbols and seductive secrets. This was probably Nash's first glimpse of real mathematics.

However, mathematics was not Nash’s favorite at that time. When he was asked to describe his career aspirations in an essay, he said he hoped to become an electrical engineer like his father. In June 1945, Nash went to Pittsburgh to study at Carnegie Institute of Technology. But before the first semester was over, his enthusiasm for engineering science had waned by half. First of all, it seems that the rigid and tedious mechanical drawing work made him tired of "standardization"; later, his new choice of chemistry major failed to cheer him up. While working as a laboratory assistant for a teacher, he got into trouble again and again - breaking several instruments. What annoyed him even more was that his "Physical Chemistry" grade only got a C. For this reason, he repeatedly complained to the professor about "theory" and the lack of mathematical precision in this course. (One of his classmates recalled: "He just didn't want to solve the problem in the way the professor specified." This was probably the crux of the problem.)

At the same time, Nash's interest in mathematics was growing day by day. , and actually dared to challenge the difficult problems recognized by the mathematics community.

His mathematical knowledge and intelligence also attracted the attention of mathematics professors. Some praised him as the "young Gauss", while others advised him to change his mind and specialize in mathematics. In the eyes of his classmates, he became a great star, and many people came to him to ask for advice. When the teacher couldn't solve the problem, he was often able to come to the rescue.

In the spring of 1948, Nash received admission notices from Harvard, Princeton, Chicago and the University of Michigan to major in mathematics at the same time. He chose Princeton University, which had a slightly higher scholarship and "watched" him more closely. This is the oldest and most influential small university in the United States. The students are naturally very arrogant and conceited, and Nash is especially so, and even more eccentric, and he soon outshines everyone else. As one classmate said: "He has the ability to trivialize anything you might think is important, and sometimes it is taken as a form of ridicule."

What is very funny is that Nash later casually said He said that he had "studied mathematics very extensively" at Princeton, but he always skipped classes, and his classmates could not remember when they had taken a formal class with him. During his graduate studies, he was never seen holding a book. One of Nash's classmates later said: "His (Nash's) justification for not reading was that excessive learning of second-hand knowledge might damage creativity and originality. This reflected his aversion to passivity and surrender."

Nash obviously spent most of his time thinking. He learned through conversations in the lounge and lectures given by visiting mathematicians. He preferred learning through hands-on study of a subject and was prepared to discover problems anytime and anywhere. Just a few weeks into his first semester at Princeton University, Nash came up with the idea of ??"letting" Einstein discuss problems with him - which in one aspect reflects Nash's courage and the power of fantasy. One day, he made an appointment to meet with the scientific giant's assistant John Kemeny (who was the inventor of the computer language BASIC) and said that he had a problem to discuss with the professor. Einstein had no airs about him and received this reckless young man politely. Nash put forward some of his views on the problem of "gravity, friction and radiation" and kept writing equations on the blackboard. Einstein smoked his dry pipe and listened calmly, occasionally interjecting a comment or question. This went on for almost an hour. In the end, Einstein just smiled kindly and said to him: "You'd better learn more physics, young man."

The meeting with von Neumann made Nash somewhat disappointed. This famous scholar simply had no patience to listen to the opinions of Nash, a "newborn calf". It now appears that the entire edifice of game theory is based on two theorems, namely the minimax theorem proposed by von Neumann in 1928 and the equilibrium theorem published by Nash in 1950. The latter can be seen as a generalization of the former. Although the strategy adopted by Nash took the same form as the ideas proposed by von Neumann, his approach to solving the problem was completely different. By extending it to games involving a variety of cooperation and competition, Nash successfully opened the door to the application of game theory to economics, political science, sociology, and even evolutionary biology. He began writing a paper during his second semester at Princeton, which later became one of the important classic documents of modern economics. His paper was also one of the earliest examples of applying the kilometer method to a social science problem. Nash pointed out in his paper that behaviors that economists have long considered to be within the scope of human psychology and cannot be explained by economic reasoning are actually subject to systematic analysis.

In 1958, due to Nash's achievements in game theory, algebraic geometry and nonlinear theory, Fortune magazine recommended him as a new generation of genius active in both pure mathematics and applied mathematics. The most outstanding figure among mathematicians. He himself was given a teaching position at MIT and married his beautiful and elegant student Alicia... However, at the top of Nash's happy life, tragedy happened.

■Alone in a strange world

When the New Year’s bell just rang in 1959, the teachers at MIT had clearly felt that the original John Nash, the genius mathematician known for his eccentricity and arrogance, has been looking more and more strange recently.

Two weeks after his disappearance, a listless Nash came to his colleagues in the college lounge, mysteriously pointed to a copy of the New York Times in his hand and said, abstractions from outer space or foreign governments The force is communicating with him through the New York Times; he also said that the information he received was only for him, and had been encrypted with a password. It requires sophisticated analysis to be seen, and it is impossible for others to decipher it; and now he Permission has been granted to share these secrets with the entire world. After hearing what he said seriously, his colleagues couldn't help but look at each other - is this guy joking again or playing some prank?

Even more bizarre things are yet to come. The University of Chicago had prepared a respected position for Nash, and Nash had planned to give a lecture there. But at this moment, Albert, the head of the school's mathematics department, received a letter from Nash that puzzled him deeply.

In the letter, Nash declined Albert's kindness, saying that he had to decline because he was scheduled to become emperor of Antarctica. Almost at the same time, Nash also wrote to the embassies of various countries in Washington, claiming that he was forming a world government, and proposed that he wanted to talk to the ambassadors and to consult with the heads of state in the future. When his illness was at its worst in the late summer of 1962, Nash even sent a postcard to his alma mater, Princeton University, to be forwarded to Mao Zedong. On it was a mysterious comment about triple cutting planes written only in French...

Nash, who was in a state of madness, was forcibly sent to a mental hospital many times. The one who was hurt the most was undoubtedly his wife and student Alicia, who was deeply infatuated with him. This young, beautiful and elegant woman was one of the few female students majoring in physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Although Nash seems to many people to be lonely, weird, and difficult to get along with, in Alicia's eyes, "He is very handsome and smart... This feeling is a bit like hero worship." Yes, Nash is not like other mathematicians So unkempt and unkempt. His haughty attitude and indifferent indifference only proved that he had real superiority. The practical Alicia felt that marrying a good man might also satisfy her ambitions, and Nash was obviously a very suitable candidate.

However, at that time, Nash did not notice Alicia, who was obsessed with him. After the calculus course taught by Nash, the infatuated woman found a job in Nash's favorite music library. She discovered that Nash played chess and liked reading science fiction novels, so she added another task to herself: learn chess; at the same time, she also developed the habit of visiting the science library - sitting near the collection of science fiction novels...

Now, "the falling flowers and flowing water are gone in spring". Alicia must face the painful reality that her husband has become increasingly cold, distant, and unpredictable, and has even threatened to hurt her and divorce her.

Finally, they broke up.

■A miracle happened suddenly

What is rare is that Alicia, who once suffered from lovesickness, maintained extraordinary composure and patience in the face of unexpected disasters. She still felt responsible for Nash, and she knew she could give Nash something he couldn't get from the doctor. In 1970, Alicia, who had divorced Nash, offered to take Nash in to live in her home, and did not want to see Nash forced to be sent to a mental hospital again... During those long years, her gentle behavior undoubtedly had a great impact on Nash. played an extremely important role in recovery.

Of course, Princeton University also takes great care of Nash. Nash was lucky to study in Princeton, live and recuperate in Princeton. His recovery can be described as a gradual improvement. People noticed: Nash went to attend academic lectures, was able to discuss academic issues with others, and was able to write computer programs...

Laureate scholar, love is fulfilled. Alicia's girl-like love has never disappeared even after experiencing disillusionment, hardships and all kinds of disappointing things, and finally ushered in the day when the flowers bloomed and the moon was full. As Sylvia Nassa said: "Marriage is undoubtedly the most mysterious and unpredictable type of human relationship. Emotions that seem superficial on the surface can become surprisingly deep and long-lasting. The relationship between Nash and Alicia That’s it.” The true story of caring for a genius has become the most touching legend in the history of the Nobel Prize in Economics.

On the afternoon when the 1994 Nobel Prize in Economics was announced, Princeton University held a small champagne party for Nash. Nash said at the meeting that he was not used to giving speeches, but this time he had three things to say. The first of these was that he hoped winning the Nobel Prize would improve his credit rating because he really needed a credit card. It is really amazing that this little wish comes from such an outstanding person.

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