Rating: 
Summary: Interesting life, interesting biography
Review: If this were fiction, it would be almost unbelievable: Mathematical genius makes epoch-making discoveries by age 30, subsequently goes insane, and--after several lost decades--recovers (though tentatively) from his illness and wins a Nobel Prize. It's hard to go wrong with subject matter like that, and Nasar does indeed manage to produce a page-flipping biography of John Forbes Nash, Jr. The secondary characters, Nash's mathematical colleagues, are also vividly depicted. (And a more Pynchon-esque bunch could hardly be imagined--are all mathematicians this weird?) I count the book's generally plain, journalistic style as a plus. If Nasar's prose doesn't reach Updikean levels, at least she conveys a lot of hard-to-explain information in a fairly straight-forward manner. She makes both the man (who's admittedly tough to like) and his ideas quite interesting. Before this book, I knew next to nothing about economics or game theory, but Nasar's biography has led me to read more about the subject.
Rating: 
Summary: A complete, balanced examination of a very unique life
Review: It's no wonder the life of John Nash has captured the imagination of American readers and moviegoers. Here is a man who spent his life in two worlds most of us never experience. For ten years, Nash devoted himself to the estranged, eccentric, "ivory tower" world of abstract mathematical research, where his unbelievable feats of intellect were matched only by his extreme social and sexual immaturity. His peers recognized him as being a true genius, but his often mean-spirited behavior and utter selfishness turned people off and resulted in his being passed over for important awards and university positions. Then, he suffered a schizophrenic break, and spent the next thirty years in and out of mental hospitals, undergoing electroshock and insulin coma therapy, haunted by complex, fanciful delusions that he was at the center of vast government and alien conspiracies. Supported only by his wife and a few friends, he eventually recovered and was awarded a Nobel Prize for his contributions to the field of economics and his research into game theory. Unlike the recent movie, which omitted the seedier side of Nash's life in order to make him more sympathetic, Sylvia Nasar does not pull her punches. Her book explores the entire man - his intellectual brilliance, his emotional aloofness, his insecurity, and his willingness to prey sexually on men and women desperate for affection. It neither lionizes him for his accomplishments nor demonizes him for his faults. With detached objectivity, she describes both his "discovery" of a new equilibrium in cooperative games and his abandonment of a mistress and illegitimate son. As a reader, I was both awed and repelled at the same time. But it was the story of a life worth reading. My one criticism of the book is that Nasar writes like a journalist, never presenting a fact without documentation. The result is that every paragraph is littered with quotes from sources - friends, acquaintances, newspapers, journals, government documents, etc. The book reads like an extended newspaper article. It takes longer to digest, and it gets bogged down in details (such as long chapters on the history of MIT and Princeton University). I prefer biographies that are more narrative in style, that get to the point quicker, and that are more emotionally engaging.
Rating:
Summary: Get Thee to a Profession
Review: This 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...
Rating:
Summary: A Beautiful Book! Even Better Than the Movie!
Review: This great biography describes the very bizarre genius from his days in a small West Virginia town, through his undergrad days in a very sooty, unhealthy Pittsburgh ,just after WW2, all the way thru his very humorous Nobel Speech..("Now, maybe I'll be able to get a credit card!". This was notably absent form the film") His growing paranoia has him searchin for secret UFO messages in the daily papers, not lining his office with magazines looking for Russian codes. He was not the depraved Cold War anti- Communist weirdo shown on the movie, but rather a very wierd UFO buff. And the book does not depict the various hallucinations, like his non-existent Princeton roommate, and the roomates non-existent niece. The book's a great read, and also describes his academic career in real detail. Since I read it a couple of years ago, before the movie came out, it did strike me as being much better than the outstanding movie. Super well-written, and definitely worth another read, if I ever get the time!
Rating:
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.
Rating:
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.
Rating:
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!
Rating:
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.
Rating:
Summary: Beautiful Mind, Beautiful Math, and Very Fine Biography
Review: I remember reading in night school John Rawls's A THEORY OF JUSTICE, which referenced one J.F. Nash's 1950's paper, and thought how I never heard about any subsequent work or about him again. Ms. Nasr's biography gives a fairly comprehensive explanation why. My one minor complaint is I wish Simon & Schuster had taken the trouble to place it in a more readable format/typography. (I know there is an audiobook, but still prefer the pleasure of reading, however fitfully). Contentwise, Ms. Nasr gives an adequate rendering of his personal life: mathematical work and contemporaries,years with mental illness, and ultimately, his inspiring triumph over many difficulties. In this regard, this biography has the graceful arc of a finely wrought novel.
Rating:
Summary: A Beautiful Biography
Review: One thing the person considering reading this book might not know is that the movie, A BEAUTIFUL MIND, although a cinematic masterpiece, bears virtually no resemblance to this, the true story of John Nash, a brilliant mathematician who spent more than three decades under the spell of schizophrenia. One important similarity between the screen version of John Nash and the man in Sylvia Nasar's biography is that he is a difficult person to like--or sympathize with at all--until it becomes clear that he is losing his mind. John Nash's story is one of triumph over the horror of madness, and his isn't the only beautiful mind in the story. Had it not been for the loving care of his wife, he admits he probably would have become homeless and might well have died.
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