John Nash

The famous mathematician John Nash died last week.

He and his wife were sadly killed in a car crash as they returned from Nash's collection of the Abel Prize.

Nash was known to many through the film A Beautiful Mind, so it was inevitable that we'd be asked by many people to make a Numberphile film about him.

These two videos - from Numberphile and Numberphile2 - focus mainly on his work on geometry and Nash Embedding Theorem.

These discoveries are are perhaps more beloved my mathematicians than Nash's more "famous" and Nobel Prize-winning work on game theory.

Some people have commented that the videos do not discuss Nash's death. They suggest we filmed it before the accident or were unaware of his passing.

This is not the case.

However we decided these videos should be timeless - something which may be watched today or in three years time.

Sure, today they are being viewed in the tragic context of Nash's death.

But in a year or two, we thought it would be wrong to emphasise a car crash rather than a lifetime of extraordinary work.

This blog post is a prime example of how, for now, the videos can be framed in the context of Nash's passing.

But I am pleased they are timeless and not pegged only to the "news cycle".

When memories of a sad car crash in New Jersey have faded, the videos can continue as a small tribute to the work of a beautiful mind.