The Nobel Prize-winning mathematician who was the inspiration for Russell Crowe's character in "A Beautiful Mind" is dead, along with his wife, after a fatal taxi crash.

John Forbes Nash, Jr. and his wife Alicia were in the back of a cab on the New Jersey Turnpike when the driver tried to pass another car and lost control. The taxi crashed into the guard rail and both Nash and his wife were ejected. They were not wearing seat belts.

Nash was a brilliant mathematician who battled paranoid schizophrenia ... a character well-played by Crowe in the 2001 movie, which won an Oscar for Best Picture.

Nash won the Nobel Prize for Economics in 1994 for his work in game theory. He taught at Princeton and MIT.

Nash was 86. Alicia was 82. They were married for 60 years.