John Nash Net Worth

What is John Nash's Net Worth?

John Nash was an American mathematician who had a net worth of $1.5 million at the time of his death. John Nash was renowned for his pioneering work in game theory, real algebraic geometry, differential geometry, and partial differential equations. His contributions to the field earned him numerous honors, including the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1994 and the Abel Prize in 2015. Nash is the subject of Sylvia Nasar's 1998 biographical book "A Beautiful Mind" and Ron Howard's Oscar-winning 2001 film adaptation of the same name, starring Russell Crowe as Nash and Jennifer Connelly as Alicia Nash.

Early Life and Education

John Nash Jr. was born on June 13, 1928 in Bluefield, West Virginia to electrical engineer John Sr. and schoolteacher Margaret. His younger sister is Martha. After graduating from high school and taking some advanced mathematics courses at Bluefield College, Nash went to the Carnegie Institute of Technology. He originally majored in chemical engineering there before switching to mathematics. Nash graduated from Carnegie with both BS and MS degrees. He went on to pursue further graduate studies in the Princeton University Department of Mathematics.

Contributions to Mathematics

As a graduate student in the Princeton University Department of Mathematics, Nash made several major contributions to mathematics in the areas of game theory and real algebraic geometry. He worked on what would become known as the Nash equilibrium, the most commonly-used solution concept for non-cooperative games. The properties of the equilibrium were outlined in his 28-page dissertation, which he turned in in 1950 to earn his PhD. The following year, Nash finalized a theorem in real algebraic geometry that he had begun working on while at Princeton. In his work, he introduced the concepts that would become known as Nash function and Nash manifold. Nash went on to become a postdoctoral fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he began focusing on differential geometry.

At MIT in 1953, Nash introduced his first embedding theorem, proving that every Riemannian manifold can be isometrically embedded into a Euclidean space. His second embedding theorem, which took around a year-and-a-half of intensive work to create, focused on resolving the loss of regularity phenomenon. Mathematician Jürgen Moser later extended Nash's ideas, creating the Nash-Moser theorem. Later, at New York University's Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Nash worked to extend mathematician Charles Morrey's work in the area of elliptic partial differential equations. He was able to bring Morrey's results into the context of parabolic partial differential equations, creating the Nash inequality. Nash also discovered and proved the De Giorgi-Nash theorem, resolving one form of Hilbert's nineteenth problem.

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Mental Illness

In 1959, Nash started showing signs of mental illness, including erratic, paranoid, and delusional thoughts that convinced him he was being persecuted. He was subsequently admitted to McLean Hospital in Belmont, Massachusetts, where he was diagnosed with schizophrenia. In 1961, Nash was admitted to the New Jersey State Hospital at Trenton. Over the course of the decade, he spent time at a number of other psychiatric hospitals in New Jersey, receiving antipsychotic medication as well as insulin shock therapy. Nash gradually recovered, and after 1970 did not require any medication.

Honors and Accolades

Nash received many honors for his contributions to mathematics. In 1978, he was given the John von Neumann Theory Prize for his pioneering work in game theory. Later, in 1994, Nash won the Nobel Prize in Economics with John Harsanyi and Reinhard Selten. At the end of the decade, he received the Leroy P. Steele Prize and an honorary doctorate from Carnegie Mellon University. Nash earned further honorary doctorates from the University of Naples Federico II, the University of Charleston, and the University of Antwerp, among other institutions of higher learning. In 2006, he was elected to the American Philosophical Society, and in 2012 he became a fellow of the American Mathematical Society. Just days before his death in 2015, Nash received the Abel Prize in Norway alongside Louis Nirenberg.

Personal Life and Death

In the early 1950s, Nash was in a relationship with nurse Eleanor Stier. He left her when he learned that she was pregnant with their son John. Nash went on to date Alicia Lardé Lopez-Harrison, an MIT alum. They married in 1957, and had a son named John before divorcing in 1963. After his final hospital discharge in 1970, Nash lived at Lardé's house. The two resumed their relationship in the 1990s and remarried in 2001.

On May 23, 2015, having returned from Norway where Nash received the Abel Prize, Nash and his wife were killed in a car accident on the New Jersey Turnpike. They were riding in a taxi that lost control and struck a guardrail, and because neither was wearing a seatbelt, they were fatally ejected.

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