Book - 10

The Oscar winning film ‘A Beautiful Mind’ is based on the book by the same name written by Sylvia Naser, an economics correspondent for The New York Times. I had purchased this book sometime ago but had kept it on the shelf to read it later. But this never materialised till I heard the news that the movie based on this book by the same title has won Oscar for the best movie award. And once I started reading, I found it gripping and worth reading. I thought of sharing this with you.
 The book is a biography of John Forbe Nash Jr, the mathematical genius, a game theorist, and visionary of the thinking machine.  Nash was born on 13 June 1928 in Bluefield, West Virginia, USA and was known to be an under achiever due to his lack of social skills. Martha, his younger sister recalled in later years,

         ‘Mother wanted me to get him dates. She was right. But I wasn’t too keen on showing off my some what odd brother.’  

Bored at school, Nash took interest in carrying out scientific experiments at home especially in Chemistry. He was also involved in making explosives that led to a death. He won full scholarship in the George Westinghouse Competition (only ten were awarded nationally at that time) and took admission in Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie-Mellon University and considered by many to be the best place for Computer science today) in 1945 with the intention of taking a degree in chemical engineering. It was here that his mathematical talents were recognised and he was persuaded to pursue a career in mathematics.

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