http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/john-f-nash-jr-mathematician-whose-life-story-inspired-‘a-beautiful-mind’-dies-at-86/ar-BBkc0so I think that of all mathematicians, other than the mental illness, I was in many ways think the way John Nash did. Even my interests in mathematics mirrored his. May they RIP.
I think Nash went crazy trying to prove the Riemann Hypotheses. When you try too hard at something without a circuit breaker, you can go crazy. In fact, the greater your capacity to concentrate, the greater the chance the damage is catastrophic to the brain. Going crazy (as opposed to being already crazy like serial killers) is probably a condition where the brain ascends into a chaotic regime (as in chaos theory) without an attractor (ego.) Hence you no longer have a self, which means you act randomly because neurons no longer have a limit point.
At 86 years old, he has had a fulling life living longer than the average male life expectantcy in the USA by 8 years. I think a greater tragedy would be for a great mathematician like him to die slowly while his brain withered away from Alzheimer's or dementia.