Last Friday, I monitored an honors psych class at a local high
school. The assignment for the day was to watch “A beautiful mind”, the award
winning 2001 film. It’s a great film, which is why it earned 4 Academy Awards (Best
Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Supporting Actress).
At the end of class, I did a little research on John Nash, and
discovered that this week (on May 23) is the 3rd anniversary of his
death in a car crash. Ironically, he and his wife were returning from Norway,
where he had just been awarded the Abel Prize (which is modeled after the Nobel
Prize) which is given to outstanding mathematicians. The taxi driver lost
control of his vehicle on the New Jersey turnpike, and both he and his wife
were thrown from the car and killed. He was 86 years old.
As his bio explains, he made fundamental contributions to game
theory, differential geometry, and the study of partial differential equations.
The four theories that he is known for are listed below:
Researchers have discovered that people with high IQs have a
lower risk of schizophrenia, but Nash (and his son) were exceptions to the
rule, since both of them developed schizophrenia.
Unless you are a scientist, the terms shown above won’t make a
lot of sense to you, but the link below does a better job of explain both game
theory and the Nash equilibrium:
Because of John Nash, game
theory now has wide-ranging applications to everything from business, law and
finance to agriculture, war and, most important for Nash, economics.
John Nash isn’t the smartest person who ever lived, but if you
scroll through the list below, you will discover that he is number 180 on the
list, with an IQ (coincidentally) of 180. Albert Einstein is number 3 on the
list with an IQ of 215.
I wouldn’t recommend spending a lot of time reading the entire
list, since there are 633 people on it, but you may find the following people
to be of interest (their place on the list is next to their name):
Leonardo DaVinci – 7
Galileo – 12
Shakespeare – 43
Thomas Edison – 54
Pavlov – 146
Mark Twain – 361
Steve Jobs – 437
FDT – 529
JFK – 532
Muhammad Ali (“I am the greatest”) – 541
Walt Disney – 618
Martin Luther King – 620
Being highly intelligent does not guarantee that you will be a
success in life, nor does having a low IQ condemn you to a life of failure
(Forrest Gump had an IQ of 75).
None of us is as smart as John Nash, or even most of the
people on the list. However, if we simply try to do our best at whatever we do,
we too will be a success in life.
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