Ilya - Reading log
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Reading log
Sylvia Nasar, A Beautiful Mind (1998). John Forbes Nash was born in a small town in West Virginia in 1928 to an engineer and a former schoolteacher. He did well in school, and sufficiently well in college (the future Carnegie Mellon University) to be called a genius by his teachers. As a graduate student in Princeton, he developed game theory beyond what the founder of the field, John von Neumann, could do, and did important work in analysis and algebraic geometry; he also behaved in a very eccentric and immature manner. After graduating, Nash worked as a lecturer at MIT; during summers he did consulting at RAND (Dr. Strangelove's alma mater), but was stripped of his security clearance after being arrested for indecent exposure. Nash fathered a son by a nurse from New England he decided not to marry, and later married a Salvadoran student and fathered another son by her. However, he began to go crazy around the time of his wife's pregnancy in 1959; when offered a permanent position by the University of Chicago, he replied that he could not accept it because he was scheduled to become the Emperor of Antarctica. During the next 30 years he was mentally ill, diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, in and out of psychiatric hospitals but having occasional periods of lucidity, during which he wrote more mathematical papers. In Luxembourg he tried to surrender his American passport, but embassy officials talked him out of it, realizing that they were dealing with a sick man. In the 1990s Nash recovered, and he continues to work as a research mathematician in Princeton. Nash's younger son, however, is also a paranoid schizophrenic, but he received a Ph.D. in mathematics from Rutgers despite his illness. In 1994 Nash was co-awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics for his work in game theory; this created an interest in his life that resulted in this biography and a film with the same name, though there are many inaccuracies in the film. Game theory, which von Neumann and Nash cofounded, lives on; the FCC's auction of the electromagnetic spectrum in 1994 was designed using its results, and it brought the U.S. government $7 billion, though similar auctions in Australia and New Zealand were spectacular failures.
Tags: books, mathematics
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![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/41201482/5470288) | | From: | ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) vdinets |
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| Date: | March 31st, 2008 02:28 am (UTC) |
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You mean, you haven't seen the movie???
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/27932535/6616454) | | From: | ygam |
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| Date: | March 31st, 2008 02:39 am (UTC) |
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I saw the movie when it came out, and read the book over the last few days.
| | From: | vdinets |
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| Date: | March 31st, 2008 02:41 am (UTC) |
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As far as I know, Nash said he liked the movie a lot, despite all fictional parts.
Jonh Nash was also an anti-semite, just like another noted American mathematician -George Birkhoff of ergodic theorem fame.
| | From: | ygam |
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| Date: | March 31st, 2008 02:39 am (UTC) |
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Но мы его любим не только за это.
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/7045947/1145239) | | From: | nagunak |
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| Date: | March 31st, 2008 04:38 am (UTC) |
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Мало ли что может человек наговорить, пока у него шизофрения.
У него это было ещё до шизофрении. Я не делаю из этого большого дела - просто ещё один штрих к портрету.
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/51117682/7291062) | | From: | xgrbml |
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| Date: | April 1st, 2008 09:45 am (UTC) |
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did important work in analysis and algebraic geometry
А что он сделал в алгебраической геометрии?
| | From: | ygam |
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| Date: | April 1st, 2008 05:06 pm (UTC) |
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Он написал статью про аппроксимируемость произвольных многообразий алгебраическими многообразиями. Про important - это мнение математиков, которых интервьюировала Насар; я не изучал алгебраическую геометрию.
| | From: | xgrbml |
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| Date: | April 1st, 2008 05:15 pm (UTC) |
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В такой формулировке понять ничего нельзя, но и вкладом в алгебраическую геометрию это вряд ли можно назвать (при этом работа может быть очень хорошей). Ну и ладно.
Мой братец с ним как-то встречался: он (братец) развил и улучшил некоторые результаты Нэша. Думал, тому будет интересно. Но ни фига ему, похоже, не интересно, и уже давно. Лекцию читает по бумажке, всегда одну и ту же. Разговора не поддерживает. Время от времени очень возбуждается, говорит "извините", хватает салфетку и начинает писать: 1, 2, 3... доходит до пары десятков и успокаивается. Штрихи к портрету...
А Сильвия теперь пишет про Перельмана :) |
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