Saturday, October 24, 2009

A BEAUTIFUL MIND

Tonight at dinner I saw my friend Christian who also graduated from BYU. Christian is in the economics department here and is also a first year grad student. One of the rumors floating around among students is that John Nash (A Beautiful Mind, Nash Equilibrium) regularly eats at the Frist Campus Center. Well Christian saw him there at lunch today. He snapped a picture with his cell phone, and lo and behold, that's John Nash. Aparently he has an office in the mathmatics department that is just down the road from my office. So after dinner I decided that I would watch the movie based on his life. It was fun to see all of the locations on campus that I have become familiar with in the movie. The faculty dining room where he receives the pens of all of his colleagues is actually the common room of one of the undergraduate colleges. There are several scenes that take place in places that I walk through to get to my office every day.

(Guess which one is the real John Nash)

Moreover, it is incredible to think that the guy that developed a concept that is key to several of the classes I am going to be taking is wandering around campus is incredible. Even further, I am constantly amazed at how many people here really have developed foundational ideas that are critical to the study of political science. I'm doing a presentation next Monday for my political behavior class and one of the articles that we are going to discuss really sets the stage for the modern study of political behavior. And what do you know, the guy who wrote it is sitting down the hall from me. Pretty cool when you stop to think about it.

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