In the summer of 1952, Nash takes a cross-country trip from Bluefield to Santa Monica. Graduate mathematics student John Milnor joins him in his own car. They are accompanied by Nash’s sister Martha, travelling in Milnor’s car, and Ruth Hincks, a journalism student who travels with Nash.

Ruth, “slim, attractive, intelligent” (147), is surprised that Nash pays her little interest, “never even notic[ing] I was there” (147). Part way through the trip, they have a falling out, and Martha is “forced, reluctantly, to ride with her older brother for the remainder of the journey” (148). Ruth leaves the group when they reach Santa Monica, but the other three rent an apartment near RAND where the two mathematicians will be working temporarily over the summer.

Nash and Milnor “spend most of their waking hours inside the RAND headquarters” (149), largely working on solo projects. They do, however, collaborate on an experiment “designed to test how well different theories of coalitions and bargaining [hold] up when real people [are] making the decisions” (149). They design a series of games in which players are “told they [can] win cash by forming coalitions” but will only receive the money if they “commit in advance to a given division of the winnings” (149-150).