John Forbes Nash Jr., 86; and his wife, Alicia Esther Lopez-Harrison de Larde Nash, 82, West Windsor residents since 1970, died in a car crash on the New Jersey Turnpike on May 23. They were returning from Norway where John, a mathematician and Nobel Prize winner, accepted the Abel Prize for mathematics from King Harald V for his work on nonlinear partial differential equations.
Nash shared the nearly $750,000 prize with longtime colleague Louis Nirenberg, a professor emeritus at New York University’s Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences.
John was born in Bluefield, West Virginia. His father was an electrical engineer with Appalachian Power Company and his mother was a teacher. He graduated from Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon) with bachelor and master’s degrees in mathematics, and received his doctorate from Princeton University. He served as a consultant for the RAND Corporation, an instructor at M.I.T., and a senior research mathematician at Princeton University.
He received the Nobel Prize for economics in 1994 for his work in game theory. Nash also received the John von Neumann Theory Prize in 1978 and the American Mathematical Society’s Steele Prize for a Seminal Contribution to Research in 1999.
Alicia was born in San Salvador, El Salvador. Her father was a medical doctor and her mother was a homemaker from a socially prominent family. She was raised in Biloxi, Mississippi, and Jersey City. As a student at Marymount School in New York she was one of a few girls who studied biology, chemistry, physics, and math. When she was accepted at MIT, she was one of 17 women and her mother shared an off campus apartment with her. She met her future husband when he taught one of her classes.
She began dating Nash in 1955, and the couple married in 1957 in Washington, D.C. They divorced in 1962 but remained close. They remarried in 2001 in a ceremony performed by then-West Windsor Mayor Carole Carson.
She worked at the technical operations and in the computer center at MIT. After getting offers from both IBM and Univac, she began working at Radio Corporation of America’s astro-electronics division, on Washington Road in West Windsor. She was retired from her work as a computer programmer for New Jersey Transit.
The Nash family was often seen at restaurants in West Windsor and Plainsboro, including Brothers Pizza, Subway, Wayback Burgers, PJ’s Pancake House, Princetonian Diner, First Wok, and Crown of India.
Following a moment of silence in the couple’s memory at West Windsor’s Memorial Day ceremony Monday, Mayor Shing-Fu Hsueh officially announced the pocket park on Alexander Road will be named “Nash Park.”
“The whole community at the ceremony was sad to hear what happened,” says Hsueh, who spoke with family and friends of the Nashes and officials at Princeton University about the possibility of honoring the couple in other ways.
Diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, John was hospitalized at McLean Hospital, Trenton Psychiatric Hospital, and Carrier Clinic. Alicia cared for him through the years and together they became mental health advocates for their son, when he was diagnosed with the same disease.
The couple was active with organizations that had helped him, such as Catholic Charities of Trenton, the New Jersey Association of Mental Health and Addiction Agencies, the Mercer County chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, and the Association for Advancement of Mental Health.
‘We are very grateful to Dr. and Mrs. Nash for their contributions to the ongoing battle of eliminating stigma, which is at the core of our mission,” says Tricia Baker, co-founder and program director of Attitudes in Reverse, an organization based in Plainsboro. “Dr. Nash is one of many inspiring examples of individuals with a mental health disorder who have enriched society.”
“We have highlighted Dr. Nash, along with several other well-known role models, in our educational program, ‘Coming Up for AIR,’ and we will continue to do so to teach students that having a mental health disorder does not need to stop anyone from living a successful and fulfilling life,” says Kurt Baker, president and co-founder of Attitudes in Reverse.
Debra Wentz, CEO of NJAMHAA developed a close friendship with the Nash family. “There are no words that can just truly capture the loss or what great people they were,” she says. “They were heroes for so many reasons. They were faced with adversity and yet have given so much back to others.”
“In the mental health field, John and Alicia are very much heroes because they were really one of the first public figures who would lend their stature and put their name to the cause of breaking down stereotypes and humanizing people with mental illness,” says Wentz. “They have lent their voice to such an important cause — to say: Here, I am human, I have a life, look at what I have achieved.”
The couple was featured in both the book by Sylvia Nasar and the subsequent film, “A Beautiful Mind.” John was portrayed by Russell Crowe, who wrote on Twitter: “Stunned…my heart goes out to John and Alicia and family. An amazing partnership. Beautiful minds, beautiful hearts.” Jennifer Connolly, who played Alicia, wrote in a statement on JustJared.com, “This is a great loss. John and Alicia Nash were an inspiration and I have deep admiration for all that they accomplished in their lives. My thoughts are with their family.”
“John’s remarkable achievements inspired generations of mathematicians, economists, and scientists who were influenced by his brilliant, groundbreaking work in game theory, and the story of his life with Alicia moved millions of readers and moviegoers who marveled at their courage in the face of daunting challenges,” said Princeton University president Christopher Eisgruber.
“She was so gracious, and you could hear her pride that John was finally receiving the recognition he was due,” said Mary Caffrey, who worked in Princeton University’s office of communications.
“While the Nobel certainly brought John Nash back into the academic community, I think Alicia realized that Sylvia Nasar’s remarkable book would bring John’s story to a wider audience, which, of course, it did. Alicia was wonderful to work with and I always admired her strength and devotion to her husband.”
Services for the couple will be for family and friends only. Mather-Hodge Funeral Home in Princeton is handling the arrangements. A memorial service at Princeton University is being planned for the fall. Survivors include their son, John Charles Martin Nash of West Windsor; John’s son, John David Stier of Massachusetts; and his sister, Martha Nash Legg.
“I like to think of myself as being sort of like an enlightened philosopher,” said John Nash in a video aired at the May 19 ceremony in Norway. “I think of myself as an exceptional mind and I’m specifically trained in mathematics. I experience myself thinking differently from other people. This could be good if I could think of something that wasn’t what everyone could think of. I like to think of myself as a genius, but later on I realized it’s meaningless.”
