John Nash and me: In memory of John Nash, Jr. (June 13, 1928 –
May 23, 2015)
In the world of mathematics, everybody knows the name of John Nash,
the 1994 Nobel Memorial Prize Winner in Economic
Sciences. I watched the movie 'A Beautiful Mind' in 2002. For most
part of the movie, I almost believed that it was a real
story that he could decode the secrets of the military of formal
Soviet Union before realized he had mental illness (paranoid
schizophrenia).
I visited Princeton University in 2003 and found his office but not
him.
Between AUGUST 26 - 27, 2005, I was invited to the "Workshop in
Celebration of Bjorn Engquist's 60th Birthday: International
Forum on Multiscale Methods and Partial Differential Equations" at
IPAM, UCLA. John Nash was an honorable guest in the
workshop as a colleague of Bjorn Engquist who moved from UCLA to
Princeton. I met John Nash and his wife in person and
had a pleasant time and conversation for two days. He was a very
nice, quiet, and polite person without too many words. His
wife
was much more talkative on the other hand. I was very glad to help
him to log on to a UCLA computer to check his e-mails. John Nash
gave a public lecture about Game Theory during the workshop with the
large auditorium completely occupied by the students and faculty of
UCLA, and other notables.