SYLVIA NASAR

A Beautiful Mind: Genius, Madness, Reawakening

Tuesday, February 24 at 7:30pm · Mountainlair Ballroom

While working as an economics reporter for The New York Times, Sylvia Nasar discovered the remarkable story of Nobel Laureate and West Virginia native John Nash-—the end result would be her critically acclaimed biography of Nash—A Beautiful Mind. After the book was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and won the National Book Critics' Circle Award in 1998, producers Brian Grazer and Ron Howard optioned it, bringing the mysteries of schizophrenia's genius, madness, and reawakening to the big screen in 2002.

Bavarian-born Nasar immigrated to the US with her family in 1951; they lived in New York and Washington, DC, before moving to Turkey in 1960. Nasar returned to the US in 1965 and later graduated from Antioch College with a degree in literature. After entering the PhD program in economics at prestigious New York University, she completed her master's degree in 1976 and conducted research with Nobel Laureate Wassily Leontief at the Institute for Economic Analysis.

The screen adaptation of Nasar's A Beautiful Mind enthralled audiences around the world; the film won Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Director, Supporting Actress, and Screenplay. It also won four Golden Globes and four Critics' Choice Awards, making it one of the most critically-acclaimed movies of 2002.

Both the book and movie explore the life and mind of John Nash-—an intellectual master in the generation that moved science and mathematics to the forefront of American consciousness. At age 21, Nash had transformed modern economics and was considered to be the most remarkable mathematician of the second half of the century. But by age 30, the debilitating and mysterious disease of schizophrenia had consumed him as he descended further into insanity. Nasar describes the effects of the disease on Nash, his wife, and close friends.

Nasar is the first to hold the Knight Chair in business journalism at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and has been a visiting scholar at Princeton University, Cambridge University, and the Institute for Advanced Study. She is currently working on a book on twentieth-century economic thinkers.