A Beautiful Mind

Nonfiction | Biography | Adult | Published in 1998

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Part 1, Chapters 1-2Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1: “A Beautiful Mind”

Chapter 1 Summary: “Bluefield, 1928-45”

In 1924, John Nash Sr. and Virginia Martin marry in the parlor of their home in Bluefield, West Virginia. John is conservative, serious, and deeply “concerned with appearances,” with a strong wish for “everything to be very proper” (27). An electrical engineer, he has a love of science and technology and a sharp mind.

Virginia is a vital woman “with a less rigid spirit than her quiet reserved husband” (27). She had once been a passionate teacher but left the profession to marry John. She will later draw on this background to encourage her son’s education.

On June 13, 1928, the Nashes have their first child, John Nash Jr. Even at a young age, Nash is “solitary and introverted” (30) and as he grows, he continues to eschew the company of other children, spending his time reading and experimenting in his room. His parents encourage his studies but also want him to be more sociable, pushing him “as hard socially as they [do] academically” (33).

At school, Nash is smart but not remarkable. In math, he refuses to accept the teacher’s preferred methods, often demonstrating that convoluted solutions could instead “be accomplished in two or three elegant steps” (34). He is not especially popular with the other pupils and is often seen as strange, arrogant, and standoffish. He is “obsessed with inventing secret codes” (36) and enjoys playing immature pranks, “occasionally ones with a nasty edge” (37).

After high school, Nash wins a scholarship to study at the Carnegie Institute of Technology, intending to become an engineer like his father.

Chapter 2 Summary: “Carnegie Institute of Technology, June 1945-June 1948”

At Carnegie, Nash’s desire to become an engineer soon gives way to a growing interest in mathematics. During his first semester, he abandons engineering and decides to major in chemistry. However, he flounders here too, complaining about “the lack of rigor in the mathematics in the course” and refusing “to do the problems the way the professor expected” (41).

The math professors soon recognize Nash’s great potential, particularly his “originality and his appetite for difficult problems” (42). In Nash’s second year, after considerable effort, they persuade him to major in mathematics and pursue a career in research.

Nash is not popular with his fellow students who, like his former schoolmates, find him “weird and socially inept” (42). When invited to play bridge with his fellows, he proves to be a terrible player because he obsesses about the “theoretical aspects” (42) rather than playing the game.

Nash is rarely invited to social occasions and is often the butt of pranks and jokes. After Nash, who has realized that he is attracted to men, makes “a pass” (43) at a fellow student, the jokes sometimes take on a homophobic element and he is regularly called “‘Homo’ and ‘Nash-mo’” (43). He responds to this treatment with bursts of anger or by arrogantly questioning the intelligence of the other students.

Nash is bitterly disappointed when he fails to rank in the top five winners of a prestigious national mathematics competition. The support and encouragement of his tutors counts for little as he craves “a more universal form of recognition,” feeling that it is “always important to be in the club” (44).

Despite this, he continues to excel in his studies and, in 1948, receives offers from Harvard, Princeton, Chicago, and Michigan, eventually accepting a place at Princeton. The chairman of Princeton’s mathematics department helps Nash get a summer research job with the Navy, something Nash hopes will help him avoid the draft if another war breaks out. Despite this job allowing him to pursue whatever research he wishes, Nash struggles to produce any work at all and spends his time “simply walking around rather aimlessly lost in thought” (48).

Chapters 1-2 Analysis

The opening chapters paint a picture of Nash as an awkward and isolated individual, often unpopular with colleagues and associates. In part, this is down to his unusual, insular demeanor, but Nash also encourages negative responses by acting haughtily and dismissively. As she does at various points throughout the text, Nasar emphasizes Nash’s enjoyment of playing pranks, including pranks with “a nasty edge” (37), as a component of this as well as an expression of his arrogant disregard for others and general social dislocation.

It is also in relation to Nash’s exclusion that the reader encounters one of the key themes of the book, sexuality and relationships, for the first time. Although only a brief mention of “a pass” (43) that Nash makes at a fellow student, it represents both an early example of Nash’s awkward efforts at human connection and another aspect of his marginalization, issues that will become more prominent as his story progresses.

Closely related to Nash’s exclusion are the idea of appearances and the perceived importance of looking “normal” and respectable. In the brief scene at the beginning of the Prologue, Nash is seen slumped and disheveled, his body as “slack as a rag doll’s” (11). Throughout the book, Nasar highlights Nash’s appearance, especially his clothing and his physical demeanor, as a way of reflecting his mental health and his isolation from the “normal” world around him.

The significance of appearance becomes more apparent in the first chapter when the reader learns that Nash’s father is obsessed with the idea that people should appear proper and respectable, to be recognized as an upstanding member of society. Nash’s parents both try to instill this idea into him. In some ways, they are successful, and Nash does display a desire to fit in, reflected in his need for recognition and his belief that it is “always important to be in the club” (44). However, in other respects, Nash rebels against this orthodoxy.

Throughout his early education, Nash refuses to follow established methodologies, often finding his own, far more effective solutions to existing problems. Initially, this is met with frustration by his teachers, but the mathematics department at Princeton recognizes Nash’s originality as his greatest strength, which becomes a prominent theme as the book progresses.

The opening chapters also introduce another key theme: connections between Nash’s intellectual abilities and approaches and his later diagnoses with schizophrenia. Nasar uses two images to highlight this and returns to them throughout the text. Nash’s boyhood obsession “with inventing secret codes” (36) anticipates his later obsession with finding secret messages and rational meaning in the most mundane and random of occurrences. Likewise, the image on which the second chapter closes, of Nash “simply walking around rather aimlessly, lost in thought” (48) prefigures his later life as “a sad phantom who haunted the Princeton University campus” (17).