John Nash (Russell Crowe)’s Timeline and Summary

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• John is a brand-new graduate student at Princeton. He doesn't really fit in, but he's not there to make friends—he's there to come up with a great idea and then get a sweet job.
• There are some hiccups along the way, but that is eventually what happens. He comes up with an idea that completely revolutionizes economics, and so he gets his choice of job placements.
• So, he goes off to MIT he goes to work in the Wheeler lab.
• While he's teaching there, he meets Alicia and falls in love.
• And it's not just his love life that's booming: he's super in demand at work as well. He even has people from the Department of Defense requesting his services so they can break Russian code (it's the 1950s and the middle of the Cold War).
• Things get a little dicey, though, when John thinks Russian operatives are following him and even shooting at him. We thought this was a drama, not a spy thriller—what is even happening?
• Well, as it turns out, lots of what we've been seeing has been, well, not entirely real. John has schizophrenia, and the dude from the DoD, John's roommate Charles, and Charles' niece Marcee have been part of his delusions.
• It's a long road, but John manages to get better with the help of his wife, and he finally gets back to work and earns back the respect of his peers.