1928–, American mathematician, b. Bluefield, W.Va., grad. Carnegie
Institute of Technology (now Carnegie-Mellon Univ., B.A. and M.A. 1948),
Ph.D. Princeton 1950. During a five-year period, beginning with his
doctoral thesis in 1949, he established the mathematical principles of
modern game theory (see games, theory of).
In four papers published between 1950–53 he made seminal contributions to
both non-cooperative game theory and to bargaining theory. He began to
experience what he termed “mental disturbances” in 1959 and remained in
seclusion for the next 30 years, suffering from paranoid schizophrenia,
which he blamed on the mental effort expended in resolving contradictions
in quantum theory. Nash returned to his academic research once the disease
was in remission, and for his landmark work on the mathematics of game
theory he shared the 1994 Nobel Prize in Economics with Hungarian-American
economist John Harsanyi and German mathematician Reinhard Selten. Nash
wrote Essays on Game Theory (1997).
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