John Forbes Nash Jr . ( 1928 – 2015 )

John Forbes Nash Jr. was born in Bluefield, West Virginia, on June 13, 1928 and was named after his father, who was an electrical engineer. His mother, Margaret Virginia (née Martin), was a school teacher before her marriage, teaching English and sometimes Latin. After attending the standard schools in Bluefield, Nash entered the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh (now Carnegie Mellon University) with a George Westinghouse Scholarship. He spent one semester as a student of chemical engineering, switched momentarily to chemistry and finally decided to major in mathematics. After graduating in 1948 with a BS and a MS at the same time, Nash was offered a scholarship to enter as a graduate student at either Harvard or Princeton. He decided for Princeton, where in