A “proper, painstaking, and very serious” man with a “sharp, inquiring mind,” John Nash Sr., John Nash’s father, is a commanding patriarch and engineer who helps to stoke his son’s early interest in science and mathematics. Nash Sr. seems to have played less of an active role in his son’s life than his mother, Virginia, but he helps to provide Nash with a comfortable, middle-class childhood, which affords his son many of the academic opportunities that would help him to become a successful mathematician. Nash Sr. dies before his wife and shortly after Eleanor Stier contacts Nash’s parents to tell them about the birth of her and John Jr.’s son, John David Stier —an event that may have hastened John Sr.’s death.