Nobel Prize-winning economist Nash lectures at Vanderbilt

by Jessica Howard

John F. Nash Jr., Nobel Prize-winning economist and visiting research collaborator in mathematics at Princeton University, traveled to Vanderbilt April 3-7. Accompanying him were his wife, Alicia, and their son John Charles.

Nash -- upon whom the Oscar Award-winning motion picture, A Beautiful Mind, was loosely based -- was on campus to speak at several events, including the McGee Lecture April 5, sponsored by the Department of Economics.

Nash's visit to Vanderbilt resulted from a long-term friendship with Dr. Herbert Y. Meltzer, chair of the program in schizophrenia at the Psychiatric Hospital at Vanderbilt. Meltzer, the Bixler/Johnson/Mays Chair in psychiatry, professor of psychiatry and professor of pharmacology, met Nash several years ago to understand the basis for both Nash's remarkable recovery from schizophrenia and to reconcile his illness with his exceptional contributions in mathematics and economics.

"Professor Nash and Mrs. Nash hope to contribute to enlightening the Nashville community about the potential for people with schizophrenia to recover when there is adequate family support and medical treatment, as needed," said Meltzer.

At the lecture, Nash discussed his theory on "Ideal Money" with economists and students from the Department of Economics, as well as faculty and students from other disciplines at the Martha Rivers Ingram Center for the Performing Arts.

"A number of Vanderbilt economics faculty have utilized the contributions by Professor Nash to game theory as a major pillar of their own research," said Meltzer.

Nash and his wife also attended a film screening of A Beautiful Mind at the Green Hills Regal Cinema 16 with an audience of more than 250 invited guests from the Nashville community. After the film, the Nashes and Meltzer and fielded questions from the audience. The Nashes discussed the differences between the film -- which was "inspired" by the events in their lives -- and reality.

"They felt the film did an excellent job to present the experience of having schizophrenia and the importance of adequate family support and medical treatment, which was more important than strict adherence to the events in their lives," said Meltzer.

Nash also discussed the background of his remarkable accomplishments in his youth and his continuing efforts to produce publishable research in both economics and mathematics.

At a brown bag lunch and lecture April 4, Nash met with members of the Department of Mathematics. He spoke to them about his work and his numerous scholarly publications.

"Nash's work has actually inspired me to change the course of my research," said Jonathan Farley, assistant professor of mathematics. "Although I am a pure mathematician, I now want to make contributions to other fields, like sociology, medicine or economics." Farley, a Fulbright Distinguished Scholar at Oxford University and a Green Party candidate for Congress, recently wrote an essay about A Beautiful Mind for the online edition of Time. [See Jan. 28-Feb. 3, 2002 Register].

When asked about his recent publicity from the movie A Beautiful Mind, Nash said he's received numerous, e-mails, faxes, letters and phone calls.

"It's quite a flood," he said. "I'll guess I'll get past it sooner or later."

Nash and his wife also met with Meltzer, residents, graduate students, students and faculty of the psychiatry department regarding schizophrenia research April 5.

"Professor Nash and I discussed his personal experience with schizophrenia, stressing the long period during which he suffered from 'illogical thinking' and had frequent auditory hallucinations, contrasted with his later ability to distinguish reality from these mental alterations and not have them influence his everyday behavior," said Meltzer. "The ability of schizophrenia to diminish cognitive function has had remarkably little effect on Professor Nash."

At age 21, Nash wrote a 27-page dissertation titled "Non-Cooperative Games," which was honored in 1994 with the Nobel Prize. According to the biography A Beautiful Mind: A Biography of John Forbes Nash, Jr., Winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics, 1994 by Sylvia Nasar, the "Nash Equilibrium" caused the majority of the "literature on non-cooperative game theory which has since grown at a prodigious rate."

Nash received his Ph.D. from Princeton University in 1950 and was a C.L.E. Moore Instructor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1951-1959.

In the 1950s, Nash was afflicted with schizophrenia, halting his academic work for nearly two decades. Nash wrote in his autobiography for the Nobel Foundation, "Now I must arrive at the time of my change from scientific rationality of thinking into the delusional thinking characteristic of persons who are diagnosed as 'schizophrenic' or 'paranoid schizophrenic'...I later spent times of the order of five to eight months in hospitals in New Jersey, always on an involuntary basis and always attempting a legal argument for release."