In September 1949, the world learned that the Soviet Union had joined the United States as a nuclear power. The shocking news intensified fears in the US and put a premium on mathematicians. Mathematicians had helped win World War Two, now there was hope they could protect Americas strategic edge. Princeton boasted the most elite maths department in the world, each of its graduate students were hand picked, that year one stood out, John Nash.

This National Geographic documentary examines the life of John Forbes Nash, an American mathematician whose works in game theory, differential geometry, and partial differential equations have provided insight into the factors that govern chance and events inside complex systems in daily life. In 1994 he won a nobel prize for his work.