John Nash, Mathematician Who Inspired ‘A Beautiful Mind,’ Killed In Taxi Accident

John Forbes Nash Jr., the esteemed mathematician whose life story inspired the film A Beautiful Mind, died in a taxi crash on Saturday in New Jersey.

John Nash Dies

Both Nash, 86, and his wife Alicia Nash, 82, died in the accident on the New Jersey Turnpike when their taxi driver lost control of the vehicle while trying to pass another car, according to State Police Sgt. Gregory Williams. After the taxi careened into a guard rail, the Nashes were ejected from the car.

“It doesn’t appear that they were wearing seatbelts,” Williams told the Star-Ledger.

The taxi driver survived the crash and was treated with non-life-threatening injuries. A passenger in the other vehicle involved in the accident also survived and was treated for neck pain.

Nash, who is best known for his work in game theory and partial differential equations, won the Nobel Prize for Economics in 1994. He went onto become a senior research mathematician at Princeton University. Nash’s work in mathematics, as well as his struggle with paranoid schizophrenia, were the subjects of A Beautiful Mind (2001), which starred Russell Crowe as Nash.

Upon learning of the deaths of John and Alicia Nash, Crowe took to Twitter to share his sorrow.