A Beautiful Mind

Nash’s symptoms slowly improve through a “gradual tapering off in the 1970s and 1980s” (350). He begins opening up more and interacting in a more normal fashion, even making friends with some of his students. In 1992, Nash’s old friend Shapley visits Princeton and, “for the first time in many, many years” (350), is able to have a proper conversation with Nash.

A remission like Nash’s is rare but not unique. The reasons for it are uncertain but it is not, as many people assume, “because of some new treatment” (353). Rather, it is the result of a steady process in which Nash develops “a growing capacity for rejecting delusional thought” (353). Eventually, Nash is able to reclaim something akin to his earlier, admittedly eccentric, personality and ability, continuing to perform research and learning to use computers.

While Nash is recovering, his name begins “appearing in the titles of dozens of articles in leading economic journals” (354). The scholars studying his work largely believe his is dead or else “languishing in a mental hospital” (254).

After knowledge of Nash’s recovery becomes better known, he is nominated for, and elected, a Fellow in the Econometric Society, a position that is “tantamount to getting one’s membership card in the club of bona-fide economic theorists” (354).