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Summary: A Beautiful Mind Review
Review: "A Beautiful Mind" The author of "A Beautiful Mind," is Sylvia Nasar. This book is absolutely extraordinary as well as unbelievable. The book is about an amazing math student by the name of John Nash. John develops and introduces several theories of mathematics around the age of 30. John Nash eventually hits rock bottom when he is diagnosed with schizophrenia. John is forced to find treatment for his illness. The genius then finds himself back on top of his game as a professor. To top this all off, John wins a Noble Prize. I had a blast reading this book, and I might add that I'm not a big reader!
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Summary: a not-really-that-beautiful mathematician
Review: (hey everyone else is making a pun with their titles so why not me?) well this book has been well commented on so i'll try to keep this brief. first, it is fact that many great mathematicians develop some sort of mental illness (it happened to kurt godel, georg cantor, and even issac newton). nash, then, is not really an unusual case. what does make him interesting, then, is the fact that he had "reawakened" from his illness and continued to do math in his old age. such among mathematic circles is very rare. and his math is indeed great. nash's ability to solve problems concerning manifolds and other topological spaces is still making waves in math today. the layman unfortunately, like nasar, doesn't appreciate this fully, which is a shame. i would have liked to get a mathematician's view on johnny's life. but, as a pop bio, it's not too bad. i agree with other reviews that it contained too much minute detail, and her references to nash looking like a golden god were overstated and a bit offputting. i wouldn't be surprised if nasar was really in love with nash. (she might have dedicated her book to alicia to subdue any suspicions of that sort.) in the end, though, we see the life of one of the greatest modern mathematicians, through triumph and tribulation, which was the ultimate goal of the book. i would recommend this book to some and not to others.
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Summary: Genius and Madness
Review: A Beautiful Mind has received much praise,and deservedly so.I don't think anyone could have written a better biography of this extraordinary mathematical genius ,who was lost to the world for more than four decades due to schizophrenia.This disease most certainly cost him the Fields Medal that he deserved in his youth,and I don't think even the Nobel he was eventually awarded would compensate for this loss:for a mathematician ,the Fields Medal is THE ultimate award . Nevertheless,the book is not perfect(hence my rating of four stars),for the following reasons: Ms Nasar is a journalist,and therefore I do not expect her mathematical knowledge to go beyond high school level.So when she talks about very advanced mathematical subjects,one feels that she is repeating what she reads ,or what she's told in interviews,like a parrot.A proof of this is in her statement of E.T Bell's definition of the zeta function(p.280):the formula she gives is that of the harmonic series divided by S(if we except the first term,1) !This means that she not only does not know what the zeta function is(and I would not expect her to),but she does not even make a difference between an exponent and a coefficient(and even a high school student would!).At page 42,the author characterizes Albert Einstein as a "mathematical genius",which of course he never was ,nor pretended to be!But this is one of the popular myths about Einstein with a widespread belief ( mainly in the States).And at page 471,there is a curious statement about Nash beginning "his talk with tensor calculus and general relativity...".As if one could talk about general relativity(at scientists level) without using tensor calculus! Another shortcoming of the book is in the spelling of French passages.Ms Nasar wants the reader to believe that her French is perfect.Well,she succeeds only with those readers who know very little French indeed.Anyone who writes "Hotel de Mont Blanc" instead of "du Mont Blanc",or "le bise" instead of "la bise",does not know a lot of French.And whilst she takes care to put the "accent aigu" above the capital E in the word Etudes,many accents are misplaced or simply missing.The mistakes abound,and there is hardly a French passage without some kind of spelling mistake.But I will only give a full list of these mistakes upon request from the author herself. It is a real pity that such a great book should be marred by such trivial mistakes,which could have been avoided had the manuscript been proof-read by a person knowledgeable in both mathematics and French.
It is to be noted that all the above remarks apply to the paperback edition,but I don't think the hardback would be any better.
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Summary: An amazing piece of detective work
Review: As I have said in the title, this book is an amazing piece of detective work about the life of Great John Nash. This is by far the work that beats the movie. If you have seen it, do not stop there - read the book, because it is TRUE! If you are interested into mathematics, into the Game theory - read it, not to learn the science, but to appreciate the scientist! However, I still give it 4 stars since the level of writing drops a little after exhilarating first few chapters. Nevertheless this is a great read!!!
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Summary: One Beautiful Mind Deserves Another
Review: If you liked the movie, you will love this book. Sylvia Nasar's superb biography takes us well beyond the film version, which, in slightly more than two hours, could only do so much. Here you will experience the rich detail of Nash's life explored by a writer of consummate skill. Nasar's prose paints marvelous pictures of Nash, his family, his quandaries, academia, departments of mathematics here and abroad, and, of course, Princeton itself (I once lived nearby). Nash was indeed a tormented soul, trapped as he was by schizophrenia, aptly termed a "cancer of the mind." Unable to develop and maintain relationships with others -- not uncommonly characteristic of genius -- he turned inward and found himself lost in the labyrinths of a frightening inner sanctum. If names like Godel, von Neumann, and Norbert Weiner are already familiar to you, you will appreciate the way in which Nasar brings them (and Einstein) to life with colorful anecdotes drawn from the reminiscences of those who knew them. This is an excellent book -- one as others have written will teach you about many things. One beautiful mind found another when Sylvia Nasar chose to write about John Forbes Nash, Jr. I, for one, am grateful that she did.
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Summary: A Beautiful Mind
Review: John Nash's story is truly inspirational. I could not stop the audio until I got to the end! John Nash, a mathematical genius, had many ups and downs in his life, including a diagnosed mental illness and various social problems that made his life painful and complicated. His Nobel-prize winning work occurred while he was writing his dissertation at Princeton. He was not recognized until later in his life for his ground-breaking contribution to "game theory". His story is one not only of his incredible gift, mental illness and remission, but really one of personal victory. In the end, he learns to live in harmony with those around him doing what he enjoyed most. One of my most recent favorites!
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Summary: A Curious Life, A Good Movie, and Sexy Mathematics
Review: Like many others I only came to this biography through the 2001 Ron Howard movie starring Russell Crowe. Having had no clue about John Nash, let alone much about the whole "mathematical community" I was very interested after seeing the movie. I guess what captured my attention most was: 1.) the tragic nature of Nash's personal struggles with schizophrenia, 2.) his genius, and 3.) the fact that most people had never heard of him (or his influence) before. Thus, the fact that Sylvia Nasar chose to write a biography about "some boring" mathematician (and mathematical society, namely Princeton's) was a bold, and much needed thing for the general public. I've read a little about such geniuses as Albert Einstein, Bertrand Russell, and Alfred North Whitehead, but in general, anything to do with science or math just turns me cold. So, even though the movie took sensational liberties, it did help to make math sexy, and attractive for the public again. So, it was now or never for me, and I bought the biography hoping to learn more, not only about Nash, but about mathematics. On the one hand, Nash's personal life was a lot more captivating than that which the movie portrayed. While the movie simplified and dramatized certain events in his life to the nth degree, such as his "mysterious non-existent roommate", or his high-drama encounters with the "government agents", the chronology was off, and there are many real events from his life that the reader of this biography will find even more interesting and pertinent. Unfortunately, the real Nash is not as sexy as the movie portrays, and he must have been a real jerk to be around at times (he was not only a cruel child, and indifferent friend, but a cruel husband as well, leaving his first wife to the dogs). My main issue with Nasar's writing is that I didn't come away satisfied that his actual work was explained very thoroughly. The wider influence, and importance of his work (as well as other mathematicians mentioned) was too vague (i.e. after reading the biography, I couldn't tell you in great detail why Nash was great, or what his work has done to change anyone's life). Perhaps, like some of the single star reviewers out there, I'm being too harsh in my criticism of Nasar as a writer, but even though I think she portrayed his personality, and the nature of schizophrenia extremely well, she didn't seem to understand the mathematical side of things as well as she probably should have to make this a "classic" biography. Nevertheless, the lack of mathematics and game theory detail is probably a good thing in that it's lead me to seek out more serious overviews on mathematics, including one called: "The Essential John Nash", edited by Ms. Nasar and Harold Kuhn, 2002. This concise summation of his work is accessible to non-math types, and highly recommended for those more interested in Nash's work than his personal life. It's possible that you will find this compendium of his work to contain everything the biography is missing, and so, both books together probably create the most complete portrait of this "beautiful mind" available to the general public.
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Summary: CITOYEN DU MONDE or ZARATHUSTRA IN ANTARCTICA
Review: Sylvia Nasar's biography of John Nash, Jr., A BEAUTIFUL MIND, is an easier book to recommend than to read, strange as that may sound. It may be the first such work which I feel actually suffers from over-research. The names of obscure mathematicians, physicists, theorists, and sundry Princetonians crowd nearly each and every page, a torrent of pronouns raining down until one starts to get that lost-in-a-crowd feeling. Nasar would have done better (and trimmed the page count nicely) had she concentrated more intensely on the half-dozen or so really important people in Nash's life instead of taking us for this long escalator journey where so many dim ghosts are met only in passing.
Unlike many, I read the book, then saw the movie. Ron Howard's film is far more concerned with Nash's disease, paranoid schizophrenia, than with Nash. Huge blocks of Nash's life are, understandably, left out--his premarital affair resulting in a son he never cared for, his apparent bisexuality and often bizarre relationships with other men his age, a sure propensity for mental cruelty, and so on. Nasar's Nash, especially the younger man, is bloodless, cold, unfeeling. The more words Nasar employed to discover something human and constant in her man, the more I was convinced she would never find any.
Yet, there is something extraordinary at work here. Something that keeps you there for this long and often confusing and contradictory ride through the perils and boredom of high academia, genius, and madness. It's a common belief that genius and madness must always be close neighbors if not cohabitors. In his Nobel autobiography, John Nash observes: "Without his 'madness,' Zarathustra would necessarily have been only another of the millions or billions of human individuals who have lived and then been forgotten." Maybe that's it.
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Summary: Get Thee to a Profession
Review: The story of John Nash's life is clearly a story of schizophrenia, a disease whose biological causes are being increasingly indentified. It is also the story of how one choice shaped a man's life. The choice, of course, was Nash's decision to attack relentlessly a critical mathematical problem in game theory widely believed to have no solution; but whose solution, if found, entailed wide ranging non-mathematical implications. Nash turned his solution of the problem into his mathematics Phd thesis in 1950.
Nash's subsequent outstanding contributions to the mathematics of real algebraic manifolds and parabolic and elliptic equations -- which reputedly made him a candidate for the 1958 Fields Medal -- were less consequential for him personally. Because, with his success in generalizing the two-person zero-sum game in 1949 and his peculiar personality, Nash had already become a man without a profession. When his disease began manifesting itself more obviously, Nash lacked a professional home to turn to, if indeed he'd ever wanted one. Not only did mathematicians and economists within Nash's specialty area know him to not be a good toiler in their fields, a loner whose eye was always on the prize, Nash was simply an "unclassifiable life form" to almost everyone, long before he started haunting Princeton's halls in those purple sneakers.
How many other crazy mathematicians have quietly retired and been looked after by their professional colleagues? No doubt, a set considerably large, by any but a mathematician's definition...
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Summary: This biography is intriguing and an interesting read
Review: The story of John Nash, a Nobel Prize winner, who recovered from schizophrenia after a 30 year bout with the disease. This biography is intriguing and an interesting read; if you've seen the movie, you should know that the film was really sanitized. John Nash, as a person, does not seem nice, decent or in any way sympathetic; he had strong views and treated people intimately connected with him like garbage. This is a good biography, if you are interested in finding out about a truly heroic comeback. The mathematics which are central to Dr. Nash's life are WAY over my head - but do not interfere with the actual telling of the story. One problem which occurs is the way the author writes the story - it is very choppy, but this is still an interesting read.
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