“A Beautiful Mind” author to speak

Sylvia Nasar’s first book, “A Beautiful Mind,” is a biography of mathematician John Nash, who battled schizophrenia before coming back to win the Nobel Prize in 1994. It won her the 1998 National Book Critics Circle Award and inspired the 2001 Academy Award-winning movie directed by Ron Howard. The author, a professor at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, will speak at U.Va. Dec. 13 at 3 p.m. in the Rotunda Dome Room. Her visit is sponsored by the department of economics, in honor of John K. Whitaker, the Georgia Bankard Professor of Economics, who is retiring from the department after 35 years. Nasar, who has a Ph.D. in economics, has consulted with Whitaker on her current project, a history of 20th-century economic thought.