John Nash, described variously as mathematical genius, shadowy figure,
phantom, elusive, furtive, mysterious, schizophrenic, and beautiful
mind, died in a horrific cab crash on May 23, exactly a month ago, along
with his wife, Alicia. He was 86 years old and was returning home from
the airport after having been awarded the Abel Prize for mathematics.
Several years earlier, in 1994, he received the Nobel Prize for
Economics.
I met John, Alicia and their son in February of 2007,
when they visited India on the invitation of the Public Diplomacy
Division of the external affairs ministry. This was a personal
initiative of Mr Pranab Mukhejee, the then Minister, who believed that a
Nobel Laureates Lecture Series would provide a platform to the ministry
to engage with the general public. John was the first Nobel Laureate to
be invited. The following year, Nadine Gordimer visited India. The
programme was discontinued thereafter on budgetary grounds.
Not
having been a student of economics, much of my time with John and Alicia
was spent in talking about other things. They openly spoke of the
medication that John and his son needed to take, including the difficult
period when John was diagnosed as being paranoid and delusional. With a
wry smile, John remarked, "I had moments of extreme lucidity during
that time but I realised that it was a clarity others could not relate
to."
His son, a mathematical genius, perhaps not yet in the
calibre of his celebrated father, was also on medication for the same
illness. He spent his time playing chess with himself and solving
Sudoku.
One day, John and I returned to the hotel after a
meeting. John wanted to change into more comfortable clothes and as he
went to his bedroom, he glanced sideways at the Sudoku puzzle his son
was working on. It could not have been a glance for more than 15-20
seconds. He returned from the bedroom wearing casuals, picked up the
book, solved the puzzle and returned the book to his son. He did all
this in less than a minute. It was my first meeting with John Nash and I
realised I was in the presence of a genius, not because the Nobel Prize
committee said so but because of what I had just witnessed.
Knowing
Dr Manmohan Singh's passion for economics, I requested the Prime
Minister's Office for a meeting. A reply came back quickly and I was
informed that the Prime Minister would be pleased to receive Professor
John Nash and his wife and their son for 10 minutes, in view of the
Prime Minister's busy schedule. The meeting lasted for around 90 minutes
and it was fascinating to see the warmth with which Dr Singh and John
interacted.
The meeting began formally. We were all seated and
then the Prime Minister walked in. After a while, Dr Singh, clearly
impatient at the stifling formal atmosphere, got up from his chair and
sat beside John. He asked his note keeper for paper and a pen. Soon John
was scribbling away with the Prime Minister looking on. This was such a
fascinating sight.
When tea and snacks arrived and both John and
Alicia were looking somewhat diffident, Dr Singh explained each item to
them personally, as he offered a plate to Alicia. He was not being the
gracious host - he had simply invited friends home and was enjoying
their company. Ninety minutes later, the Prime Minister personally
escorted us all out and waited till the car doors were shut and we drove
away. John and Alicia remarked that India was lucky to have such a
wonderful and erudite person as the Prime Minister.
In Delhi,
John delivered the Nobel Laureate lecture to a packed audience. He
treated the talk much as he would have if he were speaking to students
at Princeton or Yale. He insisted that the talk be displayed on the
screen "as the audience might have a problem with my accent". It turned
out to be an advanced economics lecture.
After the talk, many
crowded around him, shaking his hand. Most had not understood a word of
what he had said. When we sat down quietly to have a drink, Alicia said
with a smile, "The audience was expecting Russell Crowe." John
responded, as wry as ever, "And he's not half as good looking as I am."
A
few days later it was time for them to leave. I bought a copy of Sylvia
Nasar's book on which the film 'A Beautiful Mind' was based and
requested John and Alicia if they would agree to autograph it for me.
Even as we were getting ready to leave for the airport, I had not
received the book back with their autographs. Once their bags were
loaded onto the car, they invited me for tea at the lounge and said they
were happy to provide an autograph but that it was a book they did not
like. I have their autographs but it is on one of the photographs in the
book. It shows a young John and Alicia.
Farewell Alicia. Farewell John. May you both rest in peace.
(Amit
Dasgupta, a former diplomat, heads the recently launched Mumbai campus
of the SP Jain School of Global Management. The views expressed are
personal. He may be reached at [email protected])
