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Renowned Princeton Mathematician John Nash, a Nobel Prize laureate whose life story inspired the movie "A Beautiful Mind", was killed in a car accident together with his wife in New Jersey, US media reported Sunday.

According to US TV network ABC News, the car crash happened on Saturday when Nash, 86, and his wife Alicia Nash, 82, were travellng in a taxi on the New Jersey Turnpike. The taxi driver lost control of the car and crashed into a guard rail, said the report.

Local authorities don't believe the couple was wearing seat belts since both were ejected from the taxi, the report quoted New Jersey State Police Sgt. Gregory Williams as saying.

Nash, the 1994 Nobel Prize winner for Economics, had struggled with paranoid schizophrenia and his life was depicted in a 2001 Hollywood blockbuster "A Beautiful Mind", which won four Oscars including Best Picture.

"Stunned...my heart goes out to John & Alicia & family. An amazing partnership. Beautiful minds, beautiful hearts," tweeted Russell Crowe, who played the role of the mathematician in the movie.

According to news website NJ.com, the Nash couple had just arrived back in America from Norway, where Nash and his colleague received the Abel Prize for mathematics from King Harald V of Norway on Tuesday.