NASH AND THE IRRATIONAL

Abstract

Ten years ago, John Nash, the mathematician who revolutionized game theory and winner of the 1994 Nobel Prize in Economics, passed away. Throughout his career, from Princeton University to MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), and including a consultancy for the Rand Corporation, Nash lived through a turbulent period marked by the beginning of the Cold War and McCarthyism, which attributed the country's defeats in the arms race to internal subversion, accusing scientists and intellectuals who were mobilizing for global unification. This scenario provided elements for Nash to undertake numerous trips to Europe in a frustrated attempt to renounce his citizenship. Amidst this movement, the mathematician was overcome by intense delusional activity, leading to a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia and subsequent institutionalization in mental asylums, most of which involved the use of ineffective and, nowadays, reprehensible methods. Despite all the adverse circumstances, John Nash continued his work and developed a principle that would become the basis for Game Theory and contradict the classical economic assumption that the pursuit of personal interests benefits society: the principle of collaboration. Back in Princeton, the mathematician's recovery was noticed in the early 1990s. Despite the use of cutting-edge medication, Nash attributes his recovery to developing the ability to reject certain delusional lines of his own thinking, thus allowing him to emerge from irrationality.