by Sylvia Nasar
39. Borel, interview.
40. Letter from John Forbes Nash, Jr., to Virginia and John Nash, Sr., 4.54.
41. Rota, interview.
42. Stolzenberg, interview, 4.2.96.
43. Ibid.
44. Schwartz, interview.
45. Moser, interview.
46. Ibid.
47. Ibid.
48. Rota, interview, 10.94.
49. George Whitehead, professor of mathematics, MIT, interview, 12.12.95.
50. Flatto, interview.
51. Lawrence Wallen, interview, 6.4.97.
Part Two: SEPARATE LIVES
21: Singularity
1. Postcard from John Nash to Arthur Mattuck, 1968. B stood for Jacob Bricker, T for Ervin D. Thorson, F for Herbert Amasa Forrester, and R for Donald V. Reynolds.
22: A Special Friendship
1. Letter from John Forbes Nash, Jr., to Martha Nash Legg, 11.4.65.
2. Ibid.
3. Herta Newman, interview, 3.2.96.
4. D. Newman, interview.
5. Joseph Kohn, interview, 2.15.96.
6. H. Newman, interview.
7. D. Newman, interview.
8. In his 11.4.65 letter, Nash describes Thorson as one of three “special friendships.” Thorson was working in Santa Monica, California, at Douglas Aircraft.
9. The references to T in Nash’s letters continued until at least 1968, usually in conjunction with references to B (for Bricker) and F.
10. M. Legg, interview, 3.30.96.
11. Douglas Aircraft could supply no biographical or professional information on Thorson (Donald Hanson, personal communication, 6.17.97). Nash did not recall Thorson when asked about him by Harold Kuhn (6.97). What details are known of Thorson are based solely on an obituary in the Hemet News and a brief conversation with his surviving sister, Nelda Troutman, 5.28.97.
12. Hanson, interview.
13. Ibid.
14. Troutman, interview, 5.28.97.
15. Ibid.
16. Ibid.
17. Under the Eisenhower guidelines, homosexuals were not permitted to have security clearances.
23: Eleanor
1. The description of Nash’s stay at Mrs. Grant’s house is based on interviews with Lindsay Russell, 1.14.96, 4.23.96, and 7.97.
2. Postcard from John Nash, Jr., to Virginia and John Nash, Sr., 9.52.
3. Martha Nash Legg, interview, 9.3.95.
4. Eleanor Stier, interview, 2.14.96.
5. Ibid., 3.15.96.
6. Ibid., 2.14.96 and 3.18.96.
7. Arthur Mattuck, interview, 11.7.95.
8. Eleanor’s history was taken from interviews with her, 3.1 5.95, and John David Stier, 9.20.97.
9. E. Stier, interview, 2.14.96.
10. Ibid., 3.15.96.
11. That Nash was interested in, and experimented with, various drugs was recalled by Donald Newman, interview, 3.2.96. Eleanor Stier confirmed this, interview, 3.18.96, although neither witnessed Nash’s experiments, if indeed they ever took place. Their possible significance is twofold. First, it suggests Nash’s concern with enhancing his mental powers but also his concerns about his own “manliness.”
12. E. Stier, interview, 3.13.96.
13. Ibid.
14. M. Legg, interview.
15. E. Stier, interview, 3.15.96. Confirmed by Jacob Bricker, interview, 5.22.97, and Arthur Mattuck, interview.
16. Bricker, interview.
17. E. Stier, interview, 7.95.
18. Ibid.
19. Bricker, interview.
20. E. Stier, interview, 3.15.96.
21. John David Stier, interview, 6.29.96.
22. E. Stier, interview, 3.15.96.
23. J. D. Stier, interview, 9.20.97.
24. E. Stier, interview, 3.15.96.
25. Ibid.
26. Ibid, 3.18.96.
27. Ibid., 3.18.96, and J. D. Stier, interview, 9.20.97.
28. J. D. Stier, interview, 9.20.97.
29. A. Mattuck, interview.
30. E. Stier, interview, 3.18.96.
31. Bricker, interview; Mattuck, interview.
32. E. Stier, interview, 3.18.96.
33. Mattuck, interview.
34. E. Stier, interview, 3.18.96.
35. Ibid., 3.15.96.
36. Mattuck, interview.
37. Best, interview, 5.22.96.
38. Mattuck, interview, 5.21.97.
39. Bricker, interview.
40. E. Stier, interview.
41. Ibid., 3.18.96.
42. Ibid.
43. J. D. Stier, interview, 9.20.97.
44. Ibid.
24: Jack
1. Donald J. Newman, interview, 3.12.96.
2. Arthur Mattuck, interview, 5.21.97.
3. The portrait of Bricker is based on interviews with Mattuck; Newman; Herb Kamowitz; Jerome Neuwirth, 5.23.97 and 6.5.97; Leopold Flatto, 4.25.96; Lawrence Wallen, 5.20.97.
4. Jacob Bricker, interview, 5.22.97.
5. Jack Kotick, interview, 1.21.98.
6. D. Newman, interview, 3.12.96.
7. Ibid., 1.25.98.
8. Eleanor Stier, interview.
9. Letter from John Nash to Martha Nash Legg, 11.4.65.
10. Herta Newman, interview, 3.2.96.
11. Sheldon M. Novick, Henry James: The Young Master (New York: Random House, 1996).
12. Letter from J. Nash to M. Legg.
13. Alfred C. Kinsey et al., Sexual Behavior of the Human Male (Philadelphia: Saunders, 1948).
14. Letter from J. Nash to M. Legg.
15. Bricker, interview, 5.22.97.
16. Neuwirth, interviews.
17. Mattuck, interviews, 5.20.97 and 5.28.97.
18. Bricker, interview, 5.22.97.
19. Postcard from John Nash to Jacob Bricker, 8.3.67.
20. Letter from John Nash to Arthur Mattuck, 7.10.68. “Mattuckine” seems to be a reference to the Mattachine Society, the first American advocacy group for homosexuals, founded in 1951 (source: Neil Miller, Out of the Past: Gay and Lesbian History from 1869 to the Present [New York: Vintage Books, 1995], pp. 334–38).
21. Bricker, interview.
22. Bricker, interview, 1.26.98.
25: The Arrest
1. Nash mostly pursued his growing interest in computers and wrote a paper in which he proposed the idea of parallel control. “Higher Dimensional Core Arrays for Machine Memories,” RAND Memorandum, D-2495, 7.22.54; “Parallel Control,” RAND Memorandum, RM-1361, 8.27.54. He wrote two other papers as well, including “Continuous Iteration Method for Solution of Differential Games,” RAND Memorandum, RM-1326, 8.18.54.
2. The Evening Outlook (Santa Monica, California), summer 1954, various dates.
3. Ibid.
4. Melvin P. Peisakoff, interview, 6.3.97.
5. Richard Best, interview, 5.22.96. All direct quotations attributed to Best throughout chapter 25 come from the 5.22.96 interview.
6. Letter from John Nash to Arthur Mattuck, 1.15.73. In a reference to his 1954 arrest, Nash named the arresting officer.
7. Best, interview.
8. Ibid.
9. DOD Directive 52206, 1953; Executive Order 10450, 1953; Greene v. McElroy, 360 US 474, 1959.
10. Best, interview.
11. “The Consenting Adult Homosexual and the Law: An Empirical Study of Enforcement and Administration in Los Angeles County,” UCLA Law Review, vol. 13 (1966), pp. 643, 691. “Solicitation” and “police decoys”: Thomas E. Lodge, “There May Be Harm in Asking: Homosexual Solicitations and the Fighting Words Doctrine,” in Homosexuality, Criminology and the Law, edited by Wayne R. Dynes and Steven Donaldson (New York: Garland Publishing, 1992), pp. 461–93. “In 1961 every state in the United States had sodomv laws,” from Lesbians, Gav Men and the Law, edited by William B. Rubenstein (New York: The New Press, 1993), p. xvi.
12. See, for example, Jerel McCrary and Lewis Gutierrez, “The Homosexual Person in the Military and in National Security Employment,” Journal of Homosexuali
ty, vol. 5, nos. 1 and 2 (Fall 1979–Winter 1980); Ellen Schrecker, The Age of McCarthyism: A Brief History with Documents (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994).
13. McCrary and Gutierrez, op. cit.
14. Nancy Nimitz, retired economist, RAND Corporation, interview, 5.21.96.
15. Best, interview.
16. Ibid.
17. Ibid.
18. McCrary and Gutierrez, op. cit.
19. Best, interview.
20. Ibid.; “The Consenting Adult Homosexual and the Law,” op. cit.
21. Best, interview.
22. Ibid.
23. Ibid.
24. Ibid.
25. Postcard from John Nash to Virginia and John Nash, Sr., 9.54.
26. Alexander M. Mood, interview, 5.22.96.
27. RAND mathematics department roster, 1954, RAND Archives.
28. Letter from J. Nash to A. Mattuck, 1.15.73.
29. John W. Milnor, interview, 1.27.98.
30. Lloyd Shapley retold the story of Nash’s arrest at a Thanksgiving dinner in 1994. Norman Shapiro, former RAND employee, interview, 2.29.96.
31. Felix Browder, interview, 9.6.97. Browder’s recollection was that “Norman Levinson had to take care of it,” and that Levinson later regarded the arrest as a sign of “approaching schizophrenia.”
32. As quoted by N. Shapiro, interview. “Lloyd told me it was John.”
33. Irving I. Gottesman, professor of psychology, University of Virginia, interview, 1.16.98.
34. Nikki Erlenmeyer-Kimling, professor of genetics and development, Columbia University, interview, 1.17.98.
35. “J. C. C. McKinsey” (obituary), Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association, vol. 27 (1954).
36. Andrew Hodges, Alan Turing: The Enigma, op. cit.
26: Alicia
1. Alicia Nash, interviews, 10.94 and 4.18.97.
2. Peter Munstead, chief librarian, music library, MIT, interview, 9.19.97; also Lawrence Wallen, interview, 6.4.97.
3. The portrait of Alicia at age twenty-one is based largely on interviews with two women who knew her as an undergraduate at MIT: Joyce Davis, 5.17.97 and 6.30.97, and e-mails, various dates; and Emma Duchane, 4.30.96 and 6.26.97. It also draws on interviews with Wallen, 6.5.97; Arthur Mattuck, 11.7.97; Herta Newman, 3.2.96; Jacob Bricker, 5.22.97.
4. Duchane, interviews.
5. Ibid.
6. J. Davis, interview.
7. Ibid.
8. The Larde family history is based on interviews with Alicia Nash, Odette Larde, Enrique L. Larde, and the senior Enrique Larde’s self-published history, The Crown Prince Rudolf: His Mysterious Life After Mayerling (Pittsburgh: Dorrance Publishing, 1994).
9. E. Larde, The Crown Prince Rudolf, op. cit.
10. A. Nash, interview, 5.14.97.
11. O. Larde, interview, 1.7.97.
12. See, for example, Patricia Parkman, Nonviolent Insurrection in El Salvador (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1988).
13. O. Larde, interview.
14. Tinker Cassell, Veterans Administration, Biloxi, Mississippi, interview, 8.97.
15. The sketch of Marymount is based on interviews with A. Nash, 4.18.97; Elizabeth Keegen, 4.18.97; Sister Kathleen Fagan, Marymount High School, 5.22.97; Sister Ravmond, Marymount High School, 5.22.97.
16. Sister Ravmond, interview.
17. Fagan, interview.
18. A. Nash, interview.
19. Duchane, interview.
20. A. Nash, interview.
21. O. Larde, interview.
22. J. Davis, interview.
23. Sister Ravmond, interview.
24. A. Nash, interview.
25. Sister Ravmond, interview.
26. The Tech. 9.51.
27. A. Nash, interview, 8.22.95.
28. J. Davis, interview.
29. Ibid.
30. Duchane, interview.
31. J. Davis, interview.
32. Letters from Joyce Davis to her parents, 1951–53.
33. J. Davis, interview.
34. Letter from Alicia Nash to Jovce Davis, June or July 1952.
35. J. Davis, interview.
36. Ibid.
37. H. Newman, interview, 3.2.96.
38. Duchane, interview.
39. A. Nash, interview, 11.94.
40. J. Davis, interview.
41. Letter from J. Davis to her parents, 4.24.54.
42. Letter from A. Nash to J. Davis, June or Julv 1954.
43. A. Nash, interview, 7.18.96.
44. John Moore, professor of mathematics, Princeton University, interview, 10.6.95.
27: The Courtship
1. Arthur Mattuck, interview, 11.7.95.
2. Letter from Alicia Nash to Joyce Davis, 7.55.
3. Ibid.
4. Emma Duchane, interview, 4.30.96.
5. Jacob Bricker, interview, 5.22.97.
6. Duchane, interview, 6.26.97.
7. Ibid.
8. Ibid., 4.30.96.
9. Ibid., 6.26.97.
10. Mattuck, interview.
11. Eleanor Stier, interview, 2.14.96.
12. Duchane, interview, 4.30.96.
13. “Grant in Aid, Support for Dr. John F. Nash, Jr., as Alfred F. Sloan Research Fellow in Mathematics,” 5.15.56; also. Report for 1955–56, Alfred F. Sloan Foundation, New York, New York.
14. “The application is quasi-tentative … the draft problem is a complication.” Letter from John Nash to Albert W. Tucker, undated (probably written in early fall 1955).
15. Letter from John Nash to Hassler Whitney, 10.55; John Forbes Nash, Jr., membership application. Institute for Advanced Studv, 5.23.55. Nash’s application was formally approved in January (source: letter from Robert Oppenheimer to John Nash, 1.17.56).
16. Letter from A. Nash to J. Davis, 2.56.
17. Nesmith Ankeny, who joined the MIT faculty in the fall of 1955, witnessed the incident and related the anecdote to Harold and Estelle Kuhn not long after it occurred (source: Harold Kuhn, e-mail, 5.21.97, and interview, 5.22.97).
18. J. Davis, interview, 5.19.97.
28: Seattle
1. The Institute on Differential Geometry took place from mid-June to the end of July 1956 at the University of Washington in Seattle. Dates and participants given in a memorandum from Carl B. Allen-doerfer, chairman, department of mathematics, University of Washington, Seattle, 5.23.56.
2. John Milnor, e-mail, 8.97.
3. Eugenio Calabi, interview, 3.2.96; John Isbell, professor of mathematics, State University of New York at Buffalo, interview, 6.14.97; Raoul Bott, professor of mathematics, Harvard University, interview, 11.5.95.
4. E-mail from John Nash to Harold Kuhn, 4.16.96.
5. Letter from John Nash to Martha Nash Legg, 11.4.65.
6. The description of Forrester is based on: Arthur Mattuck, interview, 5.21.97, e-mail, 6.13.97; Isbell, interview, 6.14.97; Calabi, interview, 3.2.96; Albert Nijenhuis, interview, 6.17.97, e-mails, 6.13.97; Victor Klee, e-mails, 6.13.97, 6.14.97, 6.16.97; Kuhn, e-mails, 4.16.96, 4.17.96, 4.18.96; Joseph Kohn, interview, 4.17.96; John Walter, interview, 6.13.97; Robert L. Vaught, interview, 6.13.97; Ramesh Gangolli, interview, 6.16.97. Mary Sheetz provided the dates of Forrester’s employment at the University of Washington, e-mail, 6.16.97.
7. Nijenhuis, interview.
8. Mattuck, interview.
9. Isbell, interview.
10. Vaught, interview.
11. Nijenhuis, interview.
12. Vaught, interview.
13. Ibid.
14. Walter, interview.
15. Nash was in Seattle in February of 1967, apparently for a month. Letter from John Nash to Virginia Nash, 2.67.
16. Klee, interview.
17. This scene is reconstructed on the basis of recollections from Martha Nash Legg, interview, 9.2.95.
18. Postcard from John Nash to Virginia and John Nash, Sr., 7.12.56.
19. Jerome Neuwirth, interview, 5.21.97.
20. Jacob Bricker, i
nterview, 5.22.97.
29: Death and Marriage
1. Postcard from John Nash to Virginia and John Nash, Sr., 8.11.56.
2. Ibid., 9.18.56.
3. Elizabeth Hardwick, “Boston: A Lost Ideal,” Harper’s, December 1959, quoted in Paul Mariani, Lost Puritan: A Life of Robert Lowell (New York: Norton, 1994), p. 271.
4. Postcards from John Nash to Virginia and John Nash, Sr., 8.53, 9.53, 12.2.53, 1.2.55.
5. Martha Nash Legg, interview, 3.29.96.
6. Harold Kuhn, interview, 8.97.
7. M. Legg, interview.
8. Letter from John Nash to Martha Nash Legg, from Paris, 9.28.59.
9. M. Legg, interview.
10. Letter from J. Nash to H. Kuhn, 8.97.
11. Death certificate of John Nash, Sr., 9.12.56.
12. M. Legg, interview.
13. Eleanor Stier, interview, 3.15.96.
14. Natasha Brunswick, interview, 9.25.95.
15. Leo Goodman, as told to Harold Kuhn, 1.95.
16. Alicia Nash, interview, 5.14.97.
17. Letter from Alicia Nash to Joyce Davis, 10.26.56.
18. Ibid.
19. Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar (New York: Harper & Row, 1971).
20. M. Legg, interview.
21. John Nash, dinner party at Gaby and Armand Borel’s, 3.22.96.
22. M. Legg, interview.
23. A. Nash, interview, 10.11.97; also M. Legg, interview.
24. Postcard from J. Nash to V. Nash, 2.57.
25. Enrique Larde, interview, 12.21.95.
Part Three: A SLOW FIRE BURNING 30: Olden Lane and Washington Square
1. Institute for Advanced Study, Directory, 1956–57, Institute for Advanced Study Archive, Princeton, New Jersey.
2. Regis, Who Got Einstein’s Office?, op. cit., p. 5.
3. John Danskin, interview, 10.19.95.
4. Paul S. Cohen, professor of mathematics, Stanford University, interview, 1.6.96.
5. Peter Lax, professor of mathematics, Courant Institute, interview, 2.29.96.
6. Cathleen Morawetz, professor of mathematics, Courant Institute, interview, 2.29.96.
