LYCOS RETRIEVER 
John Nash: Sylvia Nasar
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At Princeton, Nash was in close proximity to the Institute of Advanced Study, which attracted such notable mathematicians as Albert Einstein, Kurt Godel, Karl Oppenheimer, Hermann Weyl, and John von Neumann. According to Sylvia Nasar, "Princeton in 1948 was to mathematicians what Paris once was to painters and novelists, Vienna to psychoanalysts and architects, and ancient Athens to philosophers and playwrights." In 1949, Nash was awarded an Atomic Energy Commission fellowship to continue his doctoral studies at Princeton. The school's faculty and students admired Nash for his obvious intellect, but his academic career remained undistinguished.
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The young Nash was a mathematical genius. He ... was egotistical, obnoxious, childish and petulant. As Nasar writes, such "strange and solitary personalities" as Descartes, Newton and Wittgenstein suggest that "an emotionally detached, inward-looking temperament can be especially conducive to scientific creativity." Wandering around Princeton's Graduate College whistling Bach, Nash arrived at a revolutionary new theory of rational conflict and cooperation, "the Nash equilibrium," which Nasar calls "one of the most influential ideas of the 20th century."
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Following his work in game theory, Nash focused on, among other things, manifolds. According to Nasar: "In one dimension, a manifold may be a straight line, in two dimensions a plane, or the surface of a cube, a balloon, or a doughnut." Although the object remains the same, it appears different when viewed from different perspectives. Because of their mutability, manifolds seemingly defied accurate depictions until Nash employed polynomial algebraic equations to describe them in 1950 and 1951.
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Harris, Oscar-nominated as tortured painter Jackson Pollock, has a supporting role as a powerful U.S. military officer who tried to lure Nash to help crack intelligence codes in the Cold War 1950s. Recent biopics, including The Insider and The Hurricane, have run into problems with charges of inaccuracy from some of those portrayed. Grazer hopes to avoid that because he's working closely with Nash, his ex-wife, Alicia, with whom he lives (to be played by Jennifer Connelly ), and Sylvia Nasar, author of the 1994 biography of the same title.
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Sylvia Nasar