A Beautiful Mind (85 page)
Authors: Sylvia Nasar
Tags: #Biography & Autobiography, #Mathematics, #Science, #Azizex666, #General
16
. Sister Ravmond, interview.
17
. Fagan, interview.
18
. A. Nash, interview.
19
. Duchane, interview.
20
. A. Nash, interview.
21
. O. Larde, interview.
22
. J. Davis, interview.
23
. Sister Ravmond, interview.
24
. A. Nash, interview.
25
. Sister Ravmond, interview.
26
.
The Tech.
9.51.
27
. A. Nash, interview, 8.22.95.
28
. J. Davis, interview.
29
. Ibid.
30
. Duchane, interview.
31
. J. Davis, interview.
32
. Letters from Joyce Davis to her parents, 1951–53.
33
. J. Davis, interview.
34
. Letter from Alicia Nash to Jovce Davis, June or July 1952.
35
. J. Davis, interview.
36
. Ibid.
37
. H. Newman, interview, 3.2.96.
38
. Duchane, interview.
39
. A. Nash, interview, 11.94.
40
. J. Davis, interview.
41
. Letter from J. Davis to her parents, 4.24.54.
42
. Letter from A. Nash to J. Davis, June or Julv 1954.
43
. A. Nash, interview, 7.18.96.
44
. John Moore, professor of mathematics, Princeton University, interview, 10.6.95.
27: The Courtship
1
. Arthur Mattuck, interview, 11.7.95.
2
. Letter from Alicia Nash to Joyce Davis, 7.55.
3
. Ibid.
4
. Emma Duchane, interview, 4.30.96.
5
. Jacob Bricker, interview, 5.22.97.
6
. Duchane, interview, 6.26.97.
7
. Ibid.
8
. Ibid., 4.30.96.
9
. Ibid., 6.26.97.
10
. Mattuck, interview.
11
. Eleanor Stier, interview, 2.14.96.
12
. Duchane, interview, 4.30.96.
13
. “Grant in Aid, Support for Dr. John F. Nash, Jr., as Alfred F. Sloan Research Fellow in Mathematics,” 5.15.56; also. Report for 1955–56, Alfred F. Sloan Foundation, New York, New York.
14
. “The application is quasi-tentative … the draft problem is a complication.” Letter from John Nash to Albert W. Tucker, undated (probably written in early fall 1955).
15
. Letter from John Nash to Hassler Whitney, 10.55; John Forbes Nash, Jr., membership application. Institute for Advanced Studv, 5.23.55. Nash’s application was formally approved in January (source: letter from Robert Oppenheimer to John Nash, 1.17.56).
16
. Letter from A. Nash to J. Davis, 2.56.
17
. Nesmith Ankeny, who joined the MIT faculty in the fall of 1955, witnessed the incident and related the anecdote to Harold and Estelle Kuhn not long after it occurred (source: Harold Kuhn, e-mail, 5.21.97, and interview, 5.22.97).
18
. J. Davis, interview, 5.19.97.
28: Seattle
1
. The Institute on Differential Geometry took place from mid-June to the end of July 1956 at the University of Washington in Seattle. Dates and participants given in a memorandum from Carl B. Allen-doerfer, chairman, department of mathematics, University of Washington, Seattle, 5.23.56.
2
. John Milnor, e-mail, 8.97.
3
. Eugenio Calabi, interview, 3.2.96; John Isbell, professor of mathematics, State University of New York at Buffalo, interview, 6.14.97; Raoul Bott, professor of mathematics, Harvard University, interview, 11.5.95.
4
. E-mail from John Nash to Harold Kuhn, 4.16.96.
5
. Letter from John Nash to Martha Nash Legg, 11.4.65.
6
. The description of Forrester is based on: Arthur Mattuck, interview, 5.21.97, e-mail, 6.13.97; Isbell, interview, 6.14.97; Calabi, interview, 3.2.96; Albert Nijenhuis, interview, 6.17.97, e-mails, 6.13.97; Victor Klee, e-mails, 6.13.97, 6.14.97, 6.16.97; Kuhn, e-mails, 4.16.96, 4.17.96, 4.18.96; Joseph Kohn, interview, 4.17.96; John Walter, interview, 6.13.97; Robert L. Vaught, interview, 6.13.97; Ramesh Gangolli, interview, 6.16.97. Mary Sheetz provided the dates of Forrester’s employment at the University of Washington, e-mail, 6.16.97.
7
. Nijenhuis, interview.
8
. Mattuck, interview.
9
. Isbell, interview.
10
. Vaught, interview.
11
. Nijenhuis, interview.
12
. Vaught, interview.
13
. Ibid.
14
. Walter, interview.
15
. Nash was in Seattle in February of 1967, apparently for a month. Letter from John Nash to Virginia Nash, 2.67.
16
. Klee, interview.
17
. This scene is reconstructed on the basis of recollections from Martha Nash Legg, interview, 9.2.95.
18
. Postcard from John Nash to Virginia and John Nash, Sr., 7.12.56.
19
. Jerome Neuwirth, interview, 5.21.97.
20
. Jacob Bricker, interview, 5.22.97.
29: Death and Marriage
1
. Postcard from John Nash to Virginia and John Nash, Sr., 8.11.56.
2
. Ibid., 9.18.56.
3
. Elizabeth Hardwick, “Boston: A Lost Ideal,”
Harper’s,
December 1959, quoted in Paul Mariani,
Lost Puritan: A Life of Robert Lowell (New
York: Norton, 1994), p. 271.
4
. Postcards from John Nash to Virginia and John Nash, Sr., 8.53, 9.53, 12.2.53, 1.2.55.
5
. Martha Nash Legg, interview, 3.29.96.
6
. Harold Kuhn, interview, 8.97.
7
. M. Legg, interview.
8
. Letter from John Nash to Martha Nash Legg, from Paris, 9.28.59.
9
. M. Legg, interview.
10
. Letter from J. Nash to H. Kuhn, 8.97.
11
. Death certificate of John Nash, Sr., 9.12.56.
12
. M. Legg, interview.
13
. Eleanor Stier, interview, 3.15.96.
14
. Natasha Brunswick, interview, 9.25.95.
15
. Leo Goodman, as told to Harold Kuhn, 1.95.
16
. Alicia Nash, interview, 5.14.97.
17
. Letter from Alicia Nash to Joyce Davis, 10.26.56.
18
. Ibid.
19
. Sylvia Plath,
The Bell Jar
(New York: Harper & Row, 1971).
20
. M. Legg, interview.
21
. John Nash, dinner party at Gaby and Armand Borel’s, 3.22.96.
22
. M. Legg, interview.
23
. A. Nash, interview, 10.11.97; also M. Legg, interview.
24
. Postcard from J. Nash to V. Nash, 2.57.
25
. Enrique Larde, interview, 12.21.95.
Part Three: A SLOW FIRE BURNING 30: Olden Lane and Washington Square
1
. Institute for Advanced Study, Directory, 1956–57, Institute for Advanced Study Archive, Princeton, New Jersey.
2
. Regis,
Who Got Einstein’s Office?,
op. cit., p. 5.
3
. John Danskin, interview, 10.19.95.
4
. Paul S. Cohen, professor of mathematics, Stanford University, interview, 1.6.96.
5
. Peter Lax, professor of mathematics, Courant Institute, interview, 2.29.96.
6
. Cathleen Morawetz, professor of mathematics, Courant Institute, interview, 2.29.96.
7
. George Boehn, “The New Uses of the Abstract,”
Fortune,
July 1958.
8
. Constance Reid,
Courant in Göttingen and New York: The Ston of an Improbable Mathematician
(New York: Springer Verlag, 1976).
9
. Ibid.
10
. Ibid.
11
. Lax, interview.
12
. Boehm, “The New Uses of the Abstract,” op. cit.
13
. Nash told Harold Kuhn that he kept a car in New York City that year and that parking it caused him innumerable headaches, personal communication, 7.97.
14
. Postcard from John Nash to Virginia and John Nash, Sr., 8.11.56.
15
. Natasha Brunswick, interview, 9.25.95.
16
. Tilla Weinstein, professor of mathematics, Rutgers University, interview, 8.25.97.
17
. Morawetz, interview.
18
. Lars Hörmander, professor of mathematics, University of Lund, interview, 2.13.97.
19
. Lax, interview.
20
. Hörmander, interview.
21
. John Isbell, e-mail, 3.28.95.
22
. Boehm, “The New Uses of the Abstract,” op. cit.
23
. Stanislaw Ulam, “John von Neumann, 1903–57,”
Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society,
vol. 64, no. 3,
part ii
(May 1958).
24
. John Nash, “Continuity of Solutions of Parabolic and Elliptic Equations,”
American Journal of Mathematics,
vol. 80 (1958), pp. 931–54.
25
. See
Chapters 2
and
16
.
26
. John Nash, “Continuity of Solutions of Parabolic and Elliptic Equations,” op. cit.
27
. Louis Nirenberg, professor of mathematics, Courant Institute, interview, 10.94. See also Lax, interview.
28
. Ibid.
29
. Ibid.
30
. Lax, interview.
31
. Ibid.
32
. Nirenberg, interview.
33
. Hörmander, interview.
34
. Ibid.
35
. Lax, interview.
36
. Nirenberg, interview.
37
. Armand Borel, professor of mathematics. Institute for Advanced Study, interview, 3.1.96.
38
. Lax, interview.
39
. Morawetz, interview; Gian-Carlo Rota, interview, 10.94.
40
. Paul R. Garabedian, professor of mathematics, Courant Institute, interview, 2.20.96.
41
. “Ennio De Giorgi, 1928–1996” and “Interview with Ennio De Giorgi,”
Notices of the American Mathematical Society,
10.97.
42
. John Nash, Jr.,
Les Prix Nobel 1994,
op. cit.
43
. Rota, interview.
44
. Lax, interview.
45
. Letter from John Nash to Robert Oppenheimer, 7.10.57.
46
. Ibid.
47
. John Nash, plenary lecture, World Congress of Psychiatry, Madrid, 8.26.96, op. cit.
48
. Institute for Advanced Study, directories, various years.
49
. Letter from J. Nash to R. Oppenheimer.
50
. John Nash, plenary lecture, op. cit.
31: The Bomb Factory
1
. Richard Emery, attorney, interview, 4.4.96.
2
. Ibid.
3
. Postcard from John Nash to Virginia Nash, 9.57.
4
. Emma Duchane, interview, 6.26.96.
5
. Alicia Nash, interview, 7.1.97.
6
. Duchane, interview.
7
. Hartley Rogers, interview, 2.16.96.
8
. Zipporah Levinson, interview, 9.11.95.
9
. A. Nash, interview, 10.94.
10
. Nash’s chief result was initially published in a note — submitted by Marston Morse of the Institute for Advanced Studies on 6.10.57 — in the
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,
no. 43 (1957), pp. 754–58. The full paper was submitted to the
American Journal of Mathematics
nearly a year later, on 5.26.58, and published in vol. 80 (1958), pp. 931–58.
11
. Elias Stein, professor of mathematics, Princeton University, interview, 12.2.95.
12
. Lennart Carleson, professor of mathematics, University of Stockholm, interview, 10.3.95.
13
. Ibid.
14
. Stein, interview.
15
. Ibid.
16
. Ibid.
17
. Paul R. Garabedian, interview, 2.20.96.
18
. George Boehm, “The New Mathematics,” two-part series,
Fortune
(June and July 1958).
19
. Martha recalled Nash’s telling her that he was considering accepting a post at Caltech in order to raise the likelihood of an offer from Harvard, possibly because Harvard and MIT had an informal nonraiding policy. Martha Nash Legg, interview, 3.30.96.
20
. Letter from John Nash to Albert W. Tucker, 10.58.
21
. At that time, tenure was normally not awarded until the candidate’s seventh year. At MIT, unlike some other institutions, tenure was paired with promotion to full, not associate, professor.
22
. Gian-Carlo Rota, interview, 10.94.
23
. John Forbes Nash, Jr.,
Les Prix Nobel 1994,
op. cit.
24
.
Awards, Honors and Prizes,
8th edition, vol. II (Detroit: Gale Research, 1989), p. 129.
25
. Lars Hörmander, interview, 2.13.97.
26
. Confidential source.
27
.
Proceedings, International Congress of Mathematicians, 1958
(Providence, R.I.: American Mathematical Society, 1960).
28
. Jürgen Moser, interview, 3.21.96.
29
.
Proceedings, International Congress of Mathematicians,
op. cit.
30
. Confidential source.
31
. Confidential source.
32
. Moser, e-mail, 12.24.97.
33
. Peter Lax, interview, 2.6.96.
34
. Moser, interview, 3.21.96.
35
. Ibid.
36
. For the history of the Bôcher Prize, see the Web site for the American Mathematical Society.