"How could you, a mathematician, believe that extraterrestrials were sending you messages?" the visitor from Harvard asked the West Virginian with the movie-star looks and Olympian manner.

"Because the ideas I had about supernatural beings came to me the same way my mathematical ideas did," came the answer. "So I took them seriously."

Thus begins the true story of John Nash, the mathematical genius who was a legend by age thirty when he slipped into madness, and who--thanks to the selflessness of a beautiful woman and the loyalty of the mathematics community--emerged after decades of ghostlike existence to win a Nobel Prize and world acclaim.The inspiration for a major motion picture, Sylvia Nasar's award-winning biography is a drama about the mystery of the human mind, triumph over incredible adversity, and the healing power of love.

"How could you, a mathematician, believe that extraterrestrials were sending you messages?" the visitor from Harvard asked the West Virginian with the movie-star looks and Olympian manner.

"Because the ideas I had about supernatural beings came to me the same way my mathematical ideas did," came the answer. "So I took them seriously."

Thus begins the true story of John Nash, the mathematical genius who was a legend by age thirty when he slipped into madness, and who--thanks to the selflessness of a beautiful woman and the loyalty of the mathematics community--emerged after decades of ghostlike existence to win a Nobel Prize and world acclaim.The inspiration for a major motion picture, Sylvia Nasar's award-winning biography is a drama about the mystery of the human mind, triumph over incredible adversity, and the healing power of love.

  Prologue

    Part One: A Beautiful Mind

1 Bluefield(1928--45)

2 Carnegie Institute of Technology (June 1945-June 1948

3 The Center of the Universe (Princeton, Fall 1948)

4 School of Genius (Princeton, Fall 1948)

5 G-enius(Princeton,1948-49)

6 Games(Princeton, Spring 1949)

7 John von Heumann (Princeton, 1948-49)

8 The Theory of Games

9 The Bargaining Problem (Princeton, Spring 1949)

10 Hash's Rival Idea (Princeton, 1949-50)

11 Lloyd (Princeton, 1950)

12 The War of Wits (RAND, Summer 1950)

13 Game Theory at RAND

14 The Draft (Princeton,1950-51)

15 A Beautiful Theorem (Princeton, 1950-51)

16 MIT

17 Bad Boys

18 Experiments(RAND, Summer 1952)

19 Reds (Spring 1953)

20 Gemetry

    Part Two: Separate Lives

21 Singniarity

22 A Special Friendship (Santa Monica, Summer 1952)

23 Eleanor

24 Jack

25 The Arrest (RAND, Summer 1954)

26 Alicia

27 The Courtship

28 Seattle (Summer 1956)

29 Death and Marriage (1956-57)

    Part Three: A Slow Fire Burning

30 Olden Lane and Washington Square (1956-57)

31 The Bomb Factory

32 Secrets (Summer 1958)

33 Schemes(Fall 1958)

34 The Emperor of Antarctica

35 In the Eye of the Storm (Spring 1959)

36 Day Breaks in Bowditch Hall

 (McLean Hospital, April-May 1959)

37 Mad Hatter's Tea (May-June 1959)

    Part Four: The Lost Years

38 Citoyen du Monde (Paris and Geneva, 1959-60)

39 Absolute Zero (Princeton, 1960)

40 Tower of Silence (Trenton State Hospital, 1961)

41 An Interlude of Enforced Rationality

 (July 1961-April 1963)

42 The "Blowing Up" Problem

 (Princeton and Carrier Clinic, 1963-65)

43 Solitude (Boston, 1965-67)

44 A Man All Alone in a Strange World

 (Roanoke, 1967-70)

45 Phantom of Fine Hall (Princetpn, 1970s)

46 A Quiet Life (Princeton, 1970-90)

    Part Five: The Most Worthy

47 Remission

48 The Prize

49 The Greatest Auction Ever

(Washington, D.C., December 1994)

50 Reawakening (Princeton, 1995-97)

Epilogue

Notes

Select Bibliography

Acknowledgments

Index