Reviews wanted: "A beautiful mind"

Send us a review of a book or film that focuses on somebody who has made an important contribution to society.

Did you learn anything new about their person’s life from the book or film? Did the book or film help you understand why this person made their important contribution?

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“A beautiful mind” is a biographical drama film whose main character is John Nash, Nobel Prize winner in Economics, interpreted by Russell Crowe and directed by Ron Howard.   

The film begins with John Nash as a brilliant mathematician which got a grant to study in Princeton. Nash is under extreme pressure to come up with an original idea. His inspiration arrives when he is gathered with other colleagues in a bar arguing about how to pick up a group of women. As of that moment he was developing the “Nash Equilibrium”, a major breakthrough in Theory of Games and in some areas related to science such as economics.

Few years later, Nash is diagnosed as schizophrenic at an early age; he had to face deliriums and hallucinations during his whole life. The tipping point in his illness was when he realized some people never grew up, even though he knows them for years. Due to the side-effects, Nash decides to stop taking his medication believing he can deal with his symptoms himself. Little by little, he manages to break down the barriers of his illness, learning to ignore the hallucinations and after two decades or so, he was able to teach again at university.  

I didn’t know anything about the personal life of John Nash, and I must admit that little about his contribution to science. The film adopts a close approach to some details of his life; he had a marvellous mind which was able to see hidden geometric patterns.