Ugly ending for a beautiful mind

John Nash, who was killed in a New Jersey motor vehicle accident May 23 along with his wife, Alicia Nash, may have been the most brilliant mind to come out of West Virginia.

John Nash

He was born in Bluefield.

After Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh and Princeton, he became a renown mathematician, winning a Nobel Prize for mathematics in 1994.

Nash's work has provided insight into the factors that govern chance and decision making inside complex systems in daily life.

His theories are used in economics, computing, evolutionary biology, artificial intelligence, accounting, computer science (minimax algorithm which is based on Nash Equilibrium), games of skill, politics and military theory. His equilibrium theory became the Nash equilibrium theory.

The computer you are using to read this had a large helping hand from John Nash's theories.

He also battled paranoid schizophrenia, as detailed in “A Beautiful Mind,” both the book by author Sylvia Nasar and the movie starring Russell Crowe.

His father, John Forbes Nash, was an electrical engineer for the Appalachian Electric Power Company. His mother, Margaret Virginia Martin Nash, had been a schoolteacher before she married. He was baptized in the Episcopal Church directly opposite the Martin house on Tazewell Street. He had a younger sister, Martha.