A Beautiful Mind (2001)

After a brilliant but asocial mathematician accepts secret work in cryptography, his life takes a turn to the nightmarish.

Director:

Ron Howard

Writers:

Akiva Goldsman, Sylvia Nasar (book)

Stars:

Russell Crowe, Ed Harris and Jennifer Connelly

Storyline

Biopic of the famed mathematician John Nash and his lifelong struggles with his mental health. Nash enrolled as a graduate student at Princeton in 1948 and almost immediately stood out as an odd duck. He devoted himself to finding something unique, a mathematical theorem that would be completely original. He kept to himself for the most part and while he went out for drinks with other students, he spends a lot of time with his roommate, Charles, who eventually becomes his best friend. John is soon a professor at MIT where he meets and eventually married a graduate student, Alicia. Over time however John begins to lose his grip on reality, eventually being institutionalized diagnosed with schizophrenia. As the depths of his imaginary world are revealed, Nash withdraws from society and it's not until the 1970s that he makes his first foray back into the world of academics, gradually returning to research and teaching. In 1994, John Nash was awarded the Nobel prize in Economics.