#Not Alone. 10 Famous People with Schizophrenia

Photo: Dr. John Nash by Active Minds, Inc.

John Nash is one of the most famous mathematicians of all time, and many know him as the subject of the famous Oscar-nominated film A Beautiful Mind. His work focused in differential geometry, game theory, and partial differential equations.

While he was clearly immensely skilled in mathematics, he struggled socially and many of his peers would criticize him. He was able to console himself in the fact that he was intellectually superior, and viewed his life as a mere distraction from the mathematical work he was truly put on earth for.

Despite his ability to publish 23 scientific studies, his mental illness did show in the paranoia that he experienced. His wife would also go on to say that his behavior was erratic. When he began to show signs of being convinced that every man who wore a red tie was involved in a communist conspiracy against him, he was sent to the McLean Hospital where he was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia.

His works have been used in evolutionary biology, computing, artificial intelligence, computer science, politics, economics, and military theory. He shared the 1994 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences and was awarded the Abel Prize and the John von Neumann Theory Prize.