John Nash

American mathematician and economist (1928–)

Nash was born at Bluefield, West Virginia. His father was an electrical engineer and his mother was a teacher. He originally studied chemical engineering at Carnegie Tech. in Pittsburg but moved courses, first to chemistry and then, encouraged by the mathematics faculty, to mathematics.

Nash then entered Princeton on a fellowship as a graduate student. At Carnegie he had taken a course on international economics and this had led to a paper on what he called ‘The Bargaining Problem’. At Princeton, he developed this further using the ideas of game theory first discussed by von Neumann and Morgenstern. The result was Nash's theory of non-cooperative games, which he wrote up for his PhD thesis. The theory, which could be applied to any finite number of players, later found applications in economics.

Nash was not certain that this work would be an acceptable topic for a thesis and, during this period, he also made certain discoveries in pure mathematics concerning manifolds. This work was published later when he was an instructor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a post he took up in 1951. At MIT he also worked on problems in differential geometry, which were relevant to general relativity theory.

At this point Nash seemed set for a brilliant mathematical career but, early in 1959, he began to suffer mental problems. In his own words, it was “the time of my change from scientific rationality of thinking into the delusional thinking characteristic of persons who are psychiatrically diagnosed as ‘schizophrenic’ or ‘paranoid schizophrenic’”. He resigned his academic post and spent periods in mental hospitals. After some 25 years Nash appears to have recovered and to have started serious mathematical work again. In 1997 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for economics for the work he had done as a young man many years before on noncooperative game theory.

John Nash (1752-1835), English architect and town planner, was one of the principal architects of the Regency period.

John Nash was born in London in September 1752. He began his career in the office of Sir Robert Taylor. In 1777 Nash established his own practice, but he went bankrupt in 1783 and moved to Wales, where he built country houses, cottages, and various minor public works. By 1791 he had achieved considerable success.

In 1796 Nash returned to London and entered into a partnership with the landscape gardener Humphrey Repton (dissolved in 1802). In 1798 Nash designed a conservatory at Brighton for the Prince of Wales (later King George IV), and he became an intimate member of the prince's circle. During the next 15 years Nash designed a number of remarkable country houses in the form of picturesque pseudomedieval castles, such as East Cowes Castle, Isle of Wright, for himself (1798); Luscombe, South Devon (1800-1804); West Grinstead and Knepp Castles, Sussex (ca. 1806); Ravensworth, County Durham, and Caerhayes, Cornwall (ca. 1808); and Cronkhill, Shropshire (ca. 1802), the first neo-Italian villa in England, from which sprang the Italianate revival of the late Regency and early Victorian eras. He also built the picturesque cottages and dairy at Blaise Hamlet near Bristol (1805-1811) and the most important of all cottages ornées, the Royal Lodge at Windsor (1812).

Nash became architect to the Department of Woods and Forests in 1806 and prepared plans for developing Marylebone Park. His scheme provided for the laying out of Regent's Park with villas and surrounding terraces of grand houses and for the creation of a processional thoroughfare (Regent Street) from Marylebone to the seat of government in Whitehall. This gigantic program, known as the Metropolitan Improvements, was a masterpiece of early town planning and transformed London's West End. In these works Nash expressed his genius for grand spectacular effects, but he was much criticized for the carelessness and incorrectness of his classical details.

In 1813 Nash was appointed one of the three "attached architects" to the Board of Works. Tow years later he began the transformation of the Royal Pavilion at Brighton, then a simple classical villa, into an Oriental dream palace with an Indian exterior and a richly fantastic chinoiserie interior, which became the most magnificent expression of Chinese taste in Europe. For the building of Buckingham Palace (1825-1830), when his creative powers were failing, Nash incurred severe official criticism. After the death of George VI in 1830, he was dismissed from the Board of Works and retired to East Cowes Castle, where he died on May 13, 1835.

Further Reading

The pioneer biography of Nash is John N. Summerson, John Nash: Architect to King George IV (1935). Complementary to Summerson's work is Terence Davis, The Architecture of John Nash (1960), which consists of a comprehensive collection of over 200 photographs and engravings of Nash's works, descriptive notes on each illustration, and a long historical introduction by Summerson. This book was followed by Davis's admirable John Nash: The Prince Regent's Architect (1966), which embodies a great deal of new material and provides a reassessment of Nash's place in British architecture. Nash is discussed in two other works by Summerson: Georgian London (1945; rev. ed. 1970) and Architecture in Britain, 1530-1830 (1954; 4th rev. ed. 1963).

Additional Sources

Summerson, John Newenham, Sir, The life and work of John Nash, architect, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1980.

• Active: 2000s
• Genres: Rock
• Instrument: Guitar, Producer, Guitar (Acoustic)
• Representative Albums: "When the Sun Calls Your Name...or, Ghost World," "The Spokesman"

Biography

John Nashinal (aka John Nash) has been an integral part of Detroit's music scene since the mid-'90s. He's been a member of several bands, including a heavy psych-garage band, the Witches; an electro-psych group, Medusa Cyclone; and an alt-country band, the Volebeats (he replaced rhythm guitarist Bob McReedy in 2001). As a behind-the-scenes player, however, he has contributed to various one-off musical projects by some of Detroit's leading figures, including various projects with friends like musician/producer Matthew Smith (Outrageous Cherry) and Troy Gregory (his band backed up Gregory on Sybil).

One of Nashinal's first groups was an Iron Maiden tribute band, Seventh Sun; thereafter, he's been a member, at one time or another, of Topsoil, Mice Termite, Gravitar/Gravitarkestra, Monster Island, Blaze Sherman Fury, and DJ Booth (featuring Gravitar's Geoff Walker). Nashinal contributed guitar on Kim Fowley and Matthew Smith's Michigan Babylon, which was released in 1996 on Smith's Detroit Electric label, and he also engineered and co-produced Fowley's Culture of Despair album.

Nashinal eventually formed his own band with guitarist Eugene Strobe (his bandmate in the Witches, ex-the Sights), keyboardist Amanda Porter, drummer Korky Winters, and bassist Noelle Christine (ex-Outrageous Cherry). After the release of a 2001 motion picture entitled Ghost World (based on the comic of the same name), Nashinal changed the group's moniker from Ghost World to the Alphabet. Their full-length debut, 2002's When the Sun Calls Your Name...or, Ghost World, was originally recorded as a Nashinal solo project during 2000-2001, with Nashinal playing most of the instruments himself, aided by Gregory, Smith, and Aliccia Berg from Slumber Party. It was expected to be released by Poptones, but the U.K.-based label underwent reorganization in 2001 and the Alphabet's debut was shelved indefinitely. Ultimately, Nashinal formed his own label, Nashinal Sound, and released the album himself, in 2002, via the band's website: www.alphabetband.com and available from local Detroit music retailers. The Alphabet worked on a second album, Open Letter to the Universe, in late 2001 and 2002. Work on a Nashinal Sound compilation -- Nashinal Skyline -- also went underway, highlighting the "darker, more introspective side of Detroit rock." ~ Bryan Thomas, All Music Guide

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