John Nash was inspired to pursue mathematics at a young age
John Nash, full name John Forbes Nash, Jr., was an American mathematician who received the 1994 Nobel Prize in Economics for his seminal work on the mathematics of game theory. He was born on June 13, 1928, in Bluefield, West Virginia, and passed away on May 23, 2015, close to Monroe Township, New Jersey. Along with Reinhard Selten and John C. Harsanyi, he received the honor. In recognition of his contributions to the field of partial differential equations, Nash shared the 2015 Abel Prize with Louis Nirenberg.
Nash started exhibiting his enthusiasm for mathematics at the age of just 14. He studied ET. 'The Men of Mathematics' by Bell to learn about renowned mathematicians throughout time. It is believed that this motivated him to choose mathematics as his area of specialization.
At Pittsburgh's Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon University), Nash initially chose to major in chemical engineering before switching to chemistry and then mathematics, where he eventually earned both a bachelor's and a master's degree in 1948. At the age of 22, he finished his doctorate at Princeton University. He started working as a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1951 and focused on partial differential equations. After episodes of mental illness, he left his position in the late 1950s. He subsequently started a casual relationship with Princeton, where he eventually rose to the position of senior research mathematician in 1995.
