Attendees of memorial service for Nash GS ’50 appreciated the tribute

The University mathematics department hosted a celebration of the life and work of John Nash GS ’50 Saturday because Nash amazed both mathematicians and non-mathematicians, according to organizing committee member and mathematics professor emeritus Joe Kohn GS ’56.

"Nash was really extraordinary. I mean, you very seldom have people who cover such a huge area, bringing in so many new and original ideas," Kohn said. "The other thing is that because of the tremendously difficult and traumatic life that he had, he became well-known throughout the world, even outside of mathematics, and we felt that we sort of owed it to the general public to have a procession."

Nash and his wife Aliciadied in a taxi accident in May.

The celebration on Saturdayopened with welcoming remarks at 9:30 a.m., then featured lectures on Nash's work by experts in economics and mathematics, a lecture on Nash's life by Nash's biographer Sylvia Nasarand aremembrance servicein the evening.

Kohn, who had known Nash since Kohn's undergraduate years at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, explained that he collaborated with department chair David Gabai GS ’80, acting chair Igor Rodnianski and professor Sergiu Klainerman to plan the events. Kohn said they selected one economics speaker and three pure mathematics speakers to reflect the fact that less than 10 percent of Nash's work lay in economics.

Mathematics professor Janos Kollar, who said he had known Nash as a colleague since 1999, said Nash had a major effect on the field of mathematics despite losing many years to his illness. He noted that Nash made several contributions in the 1950s, including discoveries in algebraic geometry, differential equations and game theory, whose effects continue today.

"Maybe his most important contribution from science's point of view, and that's what he got a Nobel Prize for, is to find connections between mathematics and economics, and the application of mathematical ideas to questions in economics," Kollar said.

Harvard economics professor Eric Maskin, a 2007 Nobel laureate in Economics who delivered a lecture on Saturdayentitled “John Nash’s Contributions to Economics and Game Theory,” said that game theory began with John von Neumann's 1928 method of solving two-player zero sum games, in which one player must win and the other must lose. Nash revolutionized game theory in 1950 by creating a way to analyze non-zero sum games involving any number of players. For example, in a war both sides can lose in suffering devastation, while in international trade both sides can win through an agreement, Maskin noted.

He added that despite the breakthrough, Nash's game theory remained unappreciated until economists began studying a set of highly applied problems in the 1970s.

Nash's mathematical prowess showed in his status as the only person to have ever won both the Nobel Prize and the Abel Prize, Kohn noted.

Kohn said that Nash’s technical power and imagination allowed him to outshine other mathematicians."He would look at things the way nobody else had looked at them," Kohn said.

He identified Nash's persistence as a third quality that led to his success.

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"You have some idea, and first of all it takes great technical ability to be able to try to carry it out, but more than that, to have the ... persistence to go after it, because the path is never straight. Even if everything seems to work, you always have to take all kinds of detours," Kohn said.

Kollar said Nash started a new field that is still developing, namely how to answer questions in economics in terms of mathematics.

Maskin, who noted he had not realized the full extent of Nash's contributions to the field until hearing the other speakers at the celebration, specified that game theory remains a lively area of research. One open question that Nash himself worked on concerns games involving at least three players, some of whom might create coalitions to take advantage of the players not in coalitions. Researchers are still seeking a way to predict which coalitions will form, Maskin said.

Kohn said the University mathematics department must take some credit for Nash's success.

"Our graduate program is very much oriented toward encouraging people to start thinking on their own," Kohn explained. "Of course a genius like that could have appeared anywhere under any circumstances, but the fact that we have this kind of atmosphere probably helped."

He added that the University took care of Nash following his mental illness, setting the stage for the nineties, when Nash began to recover until he could have a normal life.

"The department recognized what a great person he had been and treated him with kindness and so on when he was really in bad shape," Kohn said.

Based on numbers provided by Dean of Religious Life and of the Chapel Alison Boden, the Nash remembrance service marked the 13th memorial service held in the Chapel in 2015. Seven were sponsored by a department, the rest by families. Three more memorial services, including one sponsored by a department, are scheduled for the remainder of the year.

"Memorial services on campus for former faculty members and other members of the University community are relatively common and they are usually planned and sponsored by the respective department," University spokesperson Martin Mbugua said. He added that services often take place in the Chapel when a relatively large number of people will want to attend.

In Nash's case, although the mathematics department invited University President Christopher Eisgruber ’83 to speak at the Chapel, he had longstanding and unchangeable plans to leave campus for family reasons, Mbugua said. As a result, Eisgruber wrote his remarks in the form of a letter to the family, friends and colleagues of John and Alicia Nash.

University Vice President Bob Durkee ’69 delivered the message on Eisgruber's behalf.

Members of the Chapel Choir who sang at the remembrance service described the mood as more festive than mournful.

"It was definitely more focused on the legacy of John and Alicia and positive memories of them, rather than being a funeral service," Kate Wadman ’16 said. "I thought it was a nice atmosphere."

Eric Fung ’18 said that the service was very beautiful, poignant and appropriate.He called the space fairly packed, with about three-quarters of the Chapel full.

The audience contained mostly faculty and community members rather than students, Brandon Joa ’18 said.

"It was a good balance in terms of talking about John and Alicia's personal lives, and then a little bit about some academic commitments," Joa said.

He added that speakers discussed Alicia's instrumental role in helping Nash conquer schizophrenia as well as the couple's social interactions with others.

Wadman said two speakers focused on Nash's professional accomplishments, while the last three focused on the personal sides of how John and Alicia behaved as people.

Although one speaker talked extensively about Nash's math accomplishments using jargon that confused many people, the remembrance service was generally accessible,Wadman said.The evening gave her an image of him as a person that she had never really seen before, for she had never thought much about what Nash was like on a daily basis.

"The biggest takeaway was that John Nash loved what he did, and his wife loved what she did," Fung said."They both were engaged in activities that they thoroughly enjoyed and as a result were really good at, and I think that's something we can learn from them."

He noted that in mentioning Alicia, speakers emphasized her relationship with Nash and her work with mental illness.

The celebration was funded by a combination of University support and grants for math department conferences, according to Kohn. He added that members of the department went out of their way to execute the events, including taking time off to handle logistics and other details.

Kohn said that the celebration was successful, noting that among the events, Nasar's lecture drew the largest audience at roughly 300 people.

Nash's story of recovery from mental illness should teach everyone that great ideas come from all sorts of different circumstances, Kohn noted.

Maskin said he considered both Nash and his wife Alicia good friends. He added that like many mathematicians, Nash was rather shy, very modest and a little bit awkward in social settings, but he had a wonderful, rather dry sense of humor.

"When I knew him, he was enjoying life," Maskin explained of Nash's final two decades. "He had such a terrible time when he was younger with mental illness and poverty, really, that the transformation where he was treated like royalty wherever he went and people valued him for his work contributions —that was really heartwarming to see"