A Beautiful Mind

I just got done watching the movie "A Beautiful Mind". The movie is based on a true story who's main character John Nash, is played by the great Russell Crowe. Nash is a mathematical genius who's theories astonish even the best mathematicians in the States. He attends Princeton where he learns all he can as well as teaches to all who will listen.

Nash gets his degree from Princeton and begins teaching students. He starts to see things that are not real. For one example he believes that federal agents are after him. He believes that there are secret codes everywhere when there are actually none to be discovered. At one point he begins to think that the Russians are sending him coded messages in the New York Times. He eventually is checked into a hospital where it is declared that he has schizophrenia. However he does not allow the disease to slow him down all that much. After taking his medication to ease the symptoms, Nash goes back to teaching and solving theories.

After watching this amazing video I decided to do some research on the real John Nash and here is what I found.

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John Nash was born on June 13, 1928 in Bluefield West Virginia. His father was an electrical engineer and his mother was a teacher of english and latin. When Nash was in high school he was reading, and may I say by choice, "Men of Mathematics". After high school he attended Carnegie Tech, which is now known as Carnegie Mellon U. He did this on a full achedemic scholarship. After graduating from Carnegie he attended Princeton for graduate school. There he studied mathematics and became an instrucor at M.I.T. He was there from 1951-1959. His mental disturbances began in 1959, which lead to a resignation from M.I.T. Nash went in and out of hospitals for a while and then renounced his delusional hypothesis. To this day he is still working on mathematical theories. Truely an amazing story.

While watching this movie I could not help to think about the novel A Question of Power written by Bessie Head. In the book the main character Elizabeth is fighting the same symptoms as John Nash. The so called demons in her head make her look further and further into her self to find out what is real. She does not have to luxury of common medicine. Elizabeth fights through her disease with true will power. I believe because of this perseverance to overcome her own personal demons Elizabeth comes out on top a better person.

 Both stories are breath taking and almost hard to believe. If a person is strong enough, in Elizabeth's case, one can over come almost anything. For someone to overcome something as serious as what they both did and come out on top did is truely an epic story.