John Nash and wife Alicia die together in Taxi accident on NJ Turnpike

The famed Nobel-prize winner John Nash and Princeton University scholar and his wife Alicia were killed when a taxi carrying them slammed into a guardrail on the New Jersey Turnpike, ejecting and killing both. He was 86 and she was 82. They were featured in the movie A Beautiful Mind.

Mr. Nash was the father of what is known in economics as the “Nash Equilibrium,” a state where rivals in a game, a negotiation or a competition can’t advance their gains by changing their positions and thus reach a steady state.

For work on nonlinear partial differential equations, Mr. Nash last week received the prestigious Abel Prize in Oslo from the king of Norway for outstanding work in mathematics.

Driving in New Jersey Saturday, Mr. Nash’s taxi driver, Tarek Girgis, attempted to pass another car, according to New Jersey State Police Sgt. Gregory Williams. The driver lost control, crashed into a guardrail and then hit another car. An investigation into the crash is ongoing, though there is nothing suspicious about the nature of the accident, the officer said.

Scenes from the Beautiful Mind Movie


SOURCES – Wall Street Journal, Youtube