Mathematician, Nobel Prize winner John F. Nash Jr., 86

TRENTON, N.J. - John Forbes Nash Jr., 86, a mathematical genius whose struggle with schizophrenia was chronicled in the 2001 movie

A Beautiful Mind

, was killed with his wife in a car crash on the New Jersey Turnpike.

Nash and Alicia Nash, 82, of Princeton Township, were in a taxi heading home from Newark Liberty Airport after the mathemetician received an award in Norway last week.

Russell Crowe, who portrayed Nash in A Beautiful Mind, tweeted that he was "stunned."

"An amazing partnership," he wrote. "Beautiful minds, beautiful hearts."

In a statement Sunday, his costar in the film, Jennifer Connelly, called the couple "an inspiration," and the film's director, Ron Howard, tweeted that "it was an honor telling part of their story."

Known as brilliant and eccentric, Nash was associated with Princeton University for many years, most recently serving as a senior research mathematician. He won the Nobel Prize in economics in 1994 for his work in game theory, which offered insight into the dynamics of human rivalry. It is considered one of the most influential ideas of the 20th century.

Last Monday, Nash had received the prestigious Abel Prize from the Norwegian Academy of Sciences and Letters in Oslo with New York University mathematician Louis Nirenberg, who said he'd chatted with the couple for an hour at the airport in Newark before they'd gotten a cab. Nirenberg called Nash a truly great mathematician and "a kind of genius."

Princeton University president Christopher Eisgruber said the Nashes were special members of the university community.

"John's remarkable achievements inspired generations of mathematicians, economists and scientists who were influenced by his brilliant, groundbreaking work in game theory, and the story of his life with Alicia moved millions of readers and moviegoers who marveled at their courage in the face of daunting challenges," Eisgruber said in a statement.

New Jersey State Police say the Nashes were both ejected from the cab in the crash around 4:30 p.m. Saturday near Exit 8A in Monroe Township, about 15 miles northeast of Trenton. The cab driver was hospitalized.

The accident was less than a mile north of the stretch of turnpike where a six-car crash last year severely injured comedian Tracy Morgan and killed comedy writer James McNair.

News of the deaths was shocking to Nirenberg, who had spent time with the Nashes in Oslo.

"We were all so happy together," Nirenberg said. "It seemed like a dream."

In an autobiography written for the Nobel Foundation website, Nash said delusions caused him to resign as a faculty member at MIT. He also spent several months in New Jersey hospitals on an involuntary basis.

However, Nash's schizophrenia diminished through the 1970s and 1980s as he "gradually began to intellectually reject some of the delusionally influenced lines of thinking," he wrote.

The 2001 film A Beautiful Mind won four Oscars, including best picture and best director, and generated interest in John Nash's life story. The movie was based on an unauthorized biography by Sylvia Nasar, who wrote that Nash's contemporaries found him "immensely strange" and "slightly cold, a bit superior, somewhat secretive."

Much of his demeanor likely stemmed from mental illness, which began emerging in 1959 when Alicia was pregnant with a son. The film, though, did not mention Nash's older son or the years that he and Alicia spent living together after divorcing. The couple split in 1963, then resumed living together several years later and finally remarried in 2001.

Born in Bluefield, W.Va., to an electrical engineer and a housewife, Nash had read the classic Men of Mathematics by E.T. Bell by the time he was in high school. He planned to follow in his father's footsteps and studied for three years at the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh (now Carnegie Mellon University), but instead developed a passion for mathematics.

He then went to Princeton, where he worked on his equilibrium theory and, in 1950, received his doctorate with a dissertation on noncooperative games. The thesis contained the definition and properties of what would later be called the Nash equilibrium.

Nash then taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for several years and held a research post at Brandeis University before eventually returning to Princeton.