A Beautiful Mind

Alicia first meets Nash when she takes one of his classes at MIT, where she is studying physics. “Bright, vivacious, playful, and talkative” (190), Alicia is immediately drawn to Nash’s “combination of brain, status, and sexual appeal” (196). After she finishes his class, she takes a job at the university’s music library because she knows Nash is a regular visitor. There, she “studie[s] him as minutely as any fan studies his or her favorite star” (197). This is a reflection of Alicia’s ambition and great determination: she sets out to win Nash over through a dedicated campaign, learning and mirroring his interests, and having decided that, while she might not become a famous scientist herself, “marriage to an illustrious man might also satisfy her ambitions” (197). This determination also comes into play when Alicia has to make the difficult decision to have Nash committed to a mental hospital, a choice she is forced to make several times. Throughout his treatment, she remains determined to preserve Nash’s “mind and career” (262), caring for him and insisting that he not undergo procedures such as electroshock treatment which could damage his great intellect. Although, after years of struggling with Nash’s illness, Alicia eventually divorces the mathematician, she later lets him move in as a “boarder” (342) out of “pity, loyalty, and the realization that no one else on earth [will] take him” (340). After Nash’s recovery, they remarry and care for their schizophrenic son, Johnny, together. 

Before Nash marries Alicia, he has a relationship with Eleanor for several years. Eleanor is a “pretty, dark-haired nurse” (172) who meets Nash when he comes into hospital for an operation. “[S]hy and lacking in confidence” (173) and “suspicious and guarded, especially around men” (173), Eleanor is wooed by Nash’s awkward charm and begins a relationship with him. Caring by nature, she initially enjoys cooking for him and looking after him, things that Nash also enjoys, although he keeps their relationship secret for years. However, after she becomes pregnant, the relationship begins to sour, and Nash, always arrogant and elitist, begins mocking her, “call[ing] her stupid and ignorant” and “[making] fun of her pronunciation” (175). After their son is born, Nash does not offer to marry her or to support her financially, but she remains with him in the hope that he will do the right thing eventually. However, when he suggests that she should put their child up for adoption, Nash’s cold, self-serving outlook “all but kill[s] off any remaining love Eleanor felt for Nash” (178). She has to threaten to sue him in order to get child support payments. Later, they will reconcile briefly after Alicia divorces Nash and he, lonely and recently out of hospital, moves back to Boston. However, he soon loses interest and moves away before experiencing another episode of schizophrenia. 

Jack Bricker first meets Nash, who is two years his senior, when he is a graduate student at MIT. Confronted with Nash’s incredible intellect and physical attractiveness, he is “mesmerized,” “hypnotized,” and “enamored” (180) and the two begin a relationship. Surprisingly, given the homophobic attitudes of the time and the fact that Nash is, at this point, still keeping his relationship with Eleanor entirely secret, they are open about their love, making “no secret of their affection, kissing in front of other people” (180-181). This is not the first of Nash’s relationships with men, what he calls his “special friendships” (181). Sometime before, he had first found “reciprocity” (170) with Ervin Thomson although the relationship was “fleeting […] and very furtive” (170). If that relationship had been Nash’s “first real step out of his extreme emotional isolation” (170), then Bricker’s longer and more loving relationship with Nash really helped change him, “the experience of loving and being loved subtly alter[ing] Nash’s perception of himself and the possibilities open to him” (181).