Famed Mathematician John Nash Killed on New Jersey Turnpike

The famed mathematician portrayed by Russell Crowe in the Academy Award winning film A Beautiful Mind has died. John Nash was killed in a horrific accident Saturday on the New Jersey turnpike.

86-year old Nash, and his wife Alicia (played by Jennifer Connelly in A Beautiful Mind), were passengers in a taxi going southbound on the Turnpike near Exit 8A (Jamesburg) when the vehicle's driver, attempting to pass another car, lost control and hit the guard rail. The couple were not wearing seat belts and were ejected from the car, according to New Jersey State Police. Alicia Nash was also killed.

Nash had just returned from Norway where he received the Abel Prize for Mathematics from King Harald V.

Nash's struggle with paranoid schizophrenia was chronicled in the 2001 movie A Beautiful Mind, which won four Oscars. Nash attended and professed at Princeton University. He claimed paranoid delusions led to his resignation as a faculty member at M.I.T. He also spent several months in New Jersey hospitals on an involuntary basis, reports NJ1015.com. However, Nash’s schizophrenia diminished through the 1970s and 1980s.

While at Princeton, Nash worked on his equilibrium theory. The thesis contained the definition and properties of what would later be called the Nash equilibrium.