A Beautiful Mind

On New Year’s Eve 1958, Nash arrives at a party dressed as a baby, wearing nothing but “a diaper and a sash” and waving “a baby bottle full of milk” (239). Over the next two months, his mental health will deteriorate rapidly, but for this night he is “simply his flamboyant, eccentric, and slightly off-key self, playful and mischievous” (240).

Immediately before this, however, Nash was already starting to seem “a trifle more withdrawn, a little spacier” (240). His humor, always a little strange, was becoming more and more off-key and abstract, and his anecdotes were becoming more drifting and obtuse.

On one occasion, Nash gave a “lengthy monologue” on “threats to world peace and calls for world government” with the suggestion that “he had been asked to play some extraordinary role” (241). Another time, he stood in the common room declaring that “abstract powers from outer space, or perhaps it was foreign governments, were communicating with him through The New York Times” (241) using secret codes that only he could decipher.

For those who knew Nash, “none of this was especially alarming or suggested outright illness, just another stage in the evolution of Nash’s eccentricity” (240). He had always had an unusual approach to conversation, not following social cues and interacting in “normal” ways.