A Beautiful Mind

John Nash is born and raised in Bluefield, West Virginia. As a child, he is introverted and quiet, preferring reading and performing experiments to playing with other children. He is obsessed with codes and patterns and enjoys playing pranks on his sister and schoolmates.

Intending to become an engineer like his father, Nash secures a scholarship to study at the Carnegie Institute of Technology. After a year, he abandons engineering to major in mathematics. He is not popular with his fellow students who find him odd, arrogant, and immature.

Nash continues to be unpopular with his fellows when he becomes a graduate student at Princeton University. Nevertheless, his tutors recognize his great potential and he begins to develop a reputation as a great original thinker, as well as an eccentric scholar who spends much of his time wandering around lost in thought.

While at Princeton, Nash conducts research on game theory, coming up with a theorem later known as the “Nash equilibrium.” Though some consider his work important, it is not until much later that this research will become a key part of modern economics and, eventually, win Nash a Nobel Prize.