John Nash's Nobel Prize in economic sciences is to cross the block at Sotheby's.

It's the subject of a dedicated sale in New York on October 17.

Nash viewed the Nobel Prize as recognition after losing decades to schizophrenia

Nash, who died in a car accident last year, was a brilliant mathematician who developed schizophrenia early in his career.

The condition cost him several decades of his life, but he began to recover in the 1970s and was able to continue working.

He was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1994 for his ground-breaking work on game theory.

Nash was the subject of a Pullitzer Prize-winning biography titled A Beautiful Mind (1998), which was later adapted into an Oscar-winning movie starring Russell Crowe.

Nash explained in a 2004 interview that the Nobel Prize "had a tremendous impact on my life, more than on the life of most Prize winners because I was in an unusual situation.

"I was unemployed at the time...and so I was in a position to be very much influenced by the recognition of my earlier work.

"…I had become widely known, but in a sense it wasn't officially recognised. I was quoted very frequently in the literature of economics and mathematics, but it's quite different to get official recognition."

His intriguing story has made him one of the most high profile mathematicians of all time, a factor that's likely to translate into a strong price for his medal at the auction block.

It will probably sell for well over $1m, considering medals belonging to less-well-known figures like Alan Hodgkin and Hans Krebbs both made around $800,000 last year.

The record for any Nobel medal is $4.7m, paid for DNA scientist James Watson's in 2014.  

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