A Beautiful Mind: Chapter 28 Summary & Analysis

Nash travels to Seattle in June 1956 to attend a month-long summer institute at the University of Washington, where he expects his embedding theorem to make him a center of attention. Instead, though, one of Milnor’s proofs garners significant attention from the mathematicians, leaving Nash angry and embarrassed.

Amasa Forrester, who had been a first-year graduate student at Princeton during Nash’s final PhD year, recognizes Nash at the institute and invites him to come to see his living quarters. Forrester is as “brash and brilliant” as Nash, though he is also openly homosexual. Forrester has an “unusual capacity for connecting with troubled individuals,” which may have drawn him to Nash. Though it is unclear whether Forrester and Nash had much of a relationship while Nash stayed in Seattle for the month, he referred to Forrester as “F” in various letters until the 1970s.

That summer, Nash receives a call from his father, John Sr.: Eleanor had contacted Nash’s parents to tell them about their grandson. In July, Nash returns to Boston, where he learns that Eleanor has hired a lawyer; she wants regular child support payments from Nash. Bricker tries to convince Nash to pay Eleanor, and to his surprise, Nash relents.