Sylvia Nasar

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Sylvia Nasar
File:Sylvia Nasar - Flickr - Knight Foundation.jpg
Born (1947-08-17) 17 August 1947 (age 76)
Rosenheim, Germany
Occupation Journalist
Biographer
Professor of Journalism

Sylvia Nasar (Uzbek: Зулфия Назар; born 17 August 1947) is a German-born American journalist, best known for her biography of John Forbes Nash, Jr., A Beautiful Mind.

Early life and history

Nasar was born in Rosenheim, Germany, to a Bavarian mother and an Uzbek father, Rusi Nasar, who later joined the CIA as an intelligence officer. Her family immigrated to the United States in 1951, then moved to Ankara, Turkey, in 1960. She graduated with a BA in Literature from Antioch College in 1970 and earned a Master's degree in Economics at New York University in 1976. For 4 years, she did research with Nobel Laureate Wassily Leontief. She joined Fortune magazine as a staff writer in 1983, became an columnist for U.S. News & World Report in 1990, and was an economic correspondent for the New York Times from 1991 to 1999. She has been the first John S. and James L. Knight Professor of Business Journalism at Columbia University since 2001.

In March 2013, Nasar filed a lawsuit accusing the university of misdirecting $4.5 million in funds over the last decade from the same Knight endowment which pays her salary. The New York Times reported, "In her suit, Ms. Nasar said that after she complained about the misspent funds, [a Columbia University official] “intimidated and harassed” her by telling her that the Knight Foundation “was dissatisfied with her performance as Knight chair because Knight objected to her work on books.”[1]

She has three adult children, Clara, Lily and Jack, and lives in Tarrytown, New York. Her husband is Fordham University economist Darryl McLeod.[2]

A Beautiful Mind

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In 1998, Nasar published A Beautiful Mind, a biography of Nobel Prize-winning economist and mathematician John Forbes Nash, Jr.. The book describes many aspects of Nash's life, examines his personality and motivations, and deals with the stresses placed on his personal and professional relationships by severe mental illness.[3] The book won the 1998 National Book Critics Circle Award for biography.[4]

Grand Pursuit: The Story of Economic Genius

Nasar's second book, Grand Pursuit, was published in 2011. It is a historical narrative which sets forth Nasar's view that economics rescued mankind from squalor and deprivation by placing its material circumstances in its own hands rather than in Fate.[citation needed] It won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, Science and technology.

"Manifold Destiny"

Lua error in Module:Details at line 30: attempt to call field '_formatLink' (a nil value). In the 28 August 2006 The New Yorker, Nasar's article "Manifold Destiny" contained the only interview with Grigori Perelman, who solved the Poincaré conjecture, but rejected the 2006 Fields Medal, and examined Fields Medalist S.T. Yau's response to Perelman's proof. Some mathematicians wrote letters in defense of Yau over Nasar's portrayal and Yau threatened to file a lawsuit, but no suit was filed.

Awards and honors

Works

References

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  2. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  3. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 Prizes for Science Books previous winners and shortlists, The Royal Society website Archived February 1, 2009 at the Wayback Machine

External links

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