MAY 24, 2015
MONROE, NEW JERSEY
John Forbes Nash Jr., the Princeton University
mathematician whose life story was the subject of the film "A Beautiful
Mind," and his wife of nearly 60 years died Saturday in a taxi crash
on the New Jersey Turnpike, police said.
Nash was 86. Alicia Nash was 82. The couple lived in
Princeton.
The Nashes were in a taxi traveling southbound in the left
lane of the New Jersey Turnpike, State Police Sgt. Gregory Williams said. The
driver of the Ford Crown Victoria lost control as he tried to pass a Chrysler
in the center lane, crashing into a guard rail.
The Nashes were ejected from the car, Williams said.
"It doesn't appear that they were wearing seatbelts,"
he said.
The second vehicle also crashed into the guard rail,
Williams said. The taxi driver was extricated from the vehicle and flown to
Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick with
non-life-threatening injuries.
A passenger in the Chrysler was treated for neck pain, Williams
said.
Nash, a West Virginia Native, won the Nobel Prize for
Economics in 1994, the year before he joined the Princeton mathematics
department as a senior research mathematician. He is known for his work in game
theory and his struggle with paranoid schizophrenia, depicted in the 2001 film,
"A Beautiful Mind," starring Russell Crowe.
Alicia Nash was his caretaker while he battled his mental
illness. They became mental health care advocates when their son John was also
diagnosed with schizophrenia.
Nash was in Norway on Tuesday to receive the Abel Prize for
mathematics from King Harald V for his work, along with longtime colleague
Louis Nirenberg, on nonlinear partial differential equations.
Nirenberg, reached at his home Sunday, said Nash was a
"wonderful mathematician" and person. Nirenberg had just flown back
from Norway with the couple, and they were taking a taxi back from the airport,
he said.
Nirenberg had known the couple since the 1950s.
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Two passengers in a taxi were killed in a crash on the New
Jersey Turnpike in Monroe Saturday afternoon, State Police said.
The crash involved the taxi and another vehicle in the
southbound lanes around 4:30 p.m., State Police Sgt. First Class Gregory
Williams said, citing preliminary information.
Rescue crews freed one person from the other wrecked
vehicle, Williams said. They were taken to Robert Wood Johnson University
Hospital with non life-threatening injuries.
The highway's southbound inner lanes remained closed around
6 p.m., near Interchange 8A, with traffic detoured through a rest area,
according to the New Jersey Turnpike Authority.
State Police said heavy traffic delays were reported in the
area.
Additional details were not immediately released.
Traffic Delays NJTPK. SB in area of MP72,4, Monroe Twp..
Fatal MVA Invest.
— NJSP - State Police (@NJSP) May 23, 2015
Aggressive driving, especially in states that New Jersey, is
one of the leading causes of traffic accidents.
This tragedy is a prime example of this.