A Beautiful Mind

In Princeton, Nash and his fellow students meet the chairman of the mathematics department, Solomon Lefshetz. He declares that they will have to work hard to meet the university’s requirements, describing Princeton as a place “where real mathematicians [do] real mathematics” (58). He insists that they look the part, declaring, “It’s important to dress well” and demanding that they, “Let a Princeton barber cut your hair” (59).

Despite his focus on appearances, Lefshetz values “independent thinking and originality above everything” (59). He has little time for rigorous proofs and working out, accepting sparks of ingenuity as far more significant. This suits Nash perfectly, matching exactly his “temperament and style as a mathematician” (61).

Over formal tea in Princeton’s Fine Hall, students and faculty alike meet up and debate, discuss ideas, gossip, and analyze math. In an atmosphere that is “as competitive as it [is] friendly” (64), ideas flow and new theories flourish. It is a “mathematical hothouse” that will soon give Nash the “emotional and intellectual context he so much needed to express himself” (65).  

Nash thrives in Princeton, a setting that allows him to engage in mathematics on his own terms with his own methods. One afternoon in 1948, a mathematics instructor named Kai Lai Chung looks into the usually-locked Professors’ Room and sees Nash lying on his back on a large, untidy table “perfectly relaxed, motionless, obviously lost in thought, arms folded behind his head” (66).

Such behavior is far from unusual for Nash, who spends “most of his time, it appears, simply thinking” (69). He lies on desks, slides down the corridors with “his shoulder pressed firmly against the wall” (69), and sometimes even borrows bicycles and rides them in “ever-smaller concentric circles” (69). Most of the time he is muttering to himself or whistling absently.

It is not only Nash’s absent, immersive approach to thinking that marks him as unusual—his whole approach to mathematics is original and challenging. He still reaches solutions through his own routes, eschewing the usual methods to rely on his own intuition. This appears to be something that he consciously cultivates. He refuses to become too attached to any lecturer or department because he is “determined to maintain his intellectual independence” (71). He does not even read a great deal believing that “learning too much secondhand would stifle creativity and originality” (68). Instead, he picks up pieces of information from others and then “reconstructs them” (68) using his own reasoning, allowing him to reach fresh insights.

Although gaining a reputation for original thinking, Nash is still not popular. He remains arrogant and dismissive while still being socially awkward, covering these traits by presenting himself as “a self-declared free thinker” (67) rebelling against orthodoxy. His fellow students are largely “beset by shyness, awkwardness, strange mannerisms, and all kinds of physical and psychological tics” (72-72). However, even they consider Nash strange, aloof, and “totally spooky” (73). Although some of the faculty accepts his strangeness, several others find him infuriatingly obtuse and precocious.