A Beautiful Mind: A struggle with one’s self

What a powerful movie. The movie depicts the life of John Nash, a brilliant scholar who later in life goes on to win a Nobel Prize in Economics for his work on game theory (Nash Equilibrium among other things). Nash went to MIT, and later was invited to the Pentagon to crack encrypted communications. Nash then gets an assignment from the DOD and begins to work on deciphering soviet clues. After Nash gives a guest lecture at Harvard, he believes that soviet agents are trying to attack him. He ends up sedated after fighting, and is diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. We learn that half of Nash’s life is a lie, completely made up in his head.

Schizophrenia is an incredibly scary disease to think about, it is very difficult (if not impossible) to distinguish what is real and what isn’t. What is even more incredible about this story is that Nash was able to overcome the disease, and realize that the people he was seeing were not real. It is after this that he goes on to receive the Nobel Prize in economics for his works. What an incredible story.

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