A beautiful mind arrives in Dublin next month to deliver a free public lecture on the work of an Irish mathematician.
Nobel laureate John F Nash, whose life is celebrated in the popular film A Beautiful Mind, will deliver an Academy Times lecture on Wednesday, April 6th.
He comes to Dublin to honour a teacher that encouraged the Nobel laureate in his study of mathematics, the great Irish mathematician, JL Synge, who died in 1995. It is this connection which encouraged Nash to accept the invitation to come to Ireland and deliver the lecture, organised by the Royal Irish Academy and The Irish Times and sponsored by Depfa Bank plc.
Nash was only 21 when he developed a concept known as the "Nash Equilibrium" in a dissertation in 1949. It applied to a mathematical field known as game theory, and in particular described strategies in non-cooperative games, something that was immediately of value in economics.
Game theory studies interactive decision-making where the outcome for each participant or "player" depends on the actions of other players. It has applications in areas as diverse as sports, law, business, diplomacy, economics and politics. So important was the work that Nash shared the 1994 Nobel Prize in economics with John C Harsanyi of the US and Reinhard Selten of Germany.
Nash's complex life and the paranoid schizophrenia that so defined it, is hauntingly portrayed in A Beautiful Mind. He delivered a string of mathematical breakthroughs through the 1950s but these came to an abrupt end when he was struck down with schizophrenia in 1958 aged only 30. He was virtually incapacitated by the disease for the next two decades, and travelled across Europe and the US before taking a position at Princeton University in the US. Happily, the disease began to lose its hold in the early 1970s and he was able to return to work.
Nash has entitled his lecture An interesting equation. He will talk about the work of JL Synge and about an equation that helps to explain the behaviour of waves travelling through Einstein's space-time.
The lecture takes place on Wednesday, April 6th at 6.30pm in the Burke Theatre, Trinity College arts block. The talk is free but must be booked in advance due to the limited number of seats available. Tickets may be booked on the Royal Irish Academy's website at www.ria.ie, and a small number of tickets will also be available by dialling 01-6762570.
Dick Ahlstrom