Field of Science

John Nash's nighttime chalkboard scribblings

From physicist Peter Woit's blog comes a link to a PDF document containing a transcript of the bizarre scribblings that John Nash used to leave at night on the blackboards of the math department at Princeton when he was at the peak of his illness in the 70s. Often he used to haunt the hallways at night and by morning the chalkboards used to be covered with these bizarre writings. 

Reading them is like reading some inexplicable combination of Hunter S Thompson, Thomas Pynchon and Salman Rushdie. It is very tempting to read patterns into the creations of a mind that was as creative as brilliant as Nash's. However some of the words ring far more true than Nash's disturbed mind intended them to. Take a look at this.


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