A Beautiful Mind: The Life of Mathematical Genius and Novel Laureate John Nash

**Also an Academy Award-winning film starring Russell Crowe and Jennifer Connelly–directed by Ron Howard** The powerful, dramatic biography of math genius John Nash, who overcame serious mental illness and schizophrenia to win the Nobel Prize.

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 for triggering the game theory revolution. The inspiration for an Academy Award-winning movie, Sylvia Nasar’s now-classic biography is a drama about the mystery of the human mind, triumph over adversity, and the healing power of love.