Lost and found
John Nash, a mathematical genius, died on May 23rd, aged 86
STUDENTS called him the “phantom”: an elusive, furtive figure who haunted Princeton’s libraries and lecture halls. The garbled formulae he scrawled on blackboards, uninvited and unread, evinced a scholarly background. Other jottings made even less sense: “Mao Tse-Tung’s Bar Mitzvah was 13 years, 13 months and 13 days after Brezhnev’s circumcision.” Sometimes he banged his head in mental agony. Myths abounded. Had maths broken his mind? Or a love affair his heart?
This article appeared in the Obituary section of the print edition under the headline “Lost and found”
Obituary May 30th 2015
From the May 30th 2015 edition
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