Nash, 86, and wife Alicia Nash, 82, were riding in a taxi near Monroe Township when the incident occurred, State Police Sgt. 1st Class Gregory Williams said.
They were traveling southbound in the left lane when the taxi went out of control while trying to pass another car, Williams said.
The car crashed into the guard rail, and the couple was ejected from the vehicle. They were pronounced dead at the scene.
The taxi driver, Tarek Girgis, was sent to Robert Wood Johnson hospital with non-life-threatening injuries. A passenger in the other car was transported by ground to Princeton University Hospital complaining of neck pain.
No charges been filed in the accident, which is still under investigation, Williams said.
Nash, who won the Nobel Prize for Economics in 1994, struggled for a long time with schizophrenia, according to Princeton University’s biography of him. Nash received his Ph. D. from Princeton.
Russell Crowe played a character loosely based on Nash in the Oscar-winning film “A Beautiful Mind.”
Nash accepted the 2015 Abel Prize in Norway last week for mathematical contributions.
