The Legend of von Neumann (1973) [pdf]

The Legend of von Neumann (1973) [pdf]gwern.net

141 points•suopspaces•about 4 hours ago•77 comments•

77 comments

breputabout 1 hour ago

My favorite von Neumann anecdote was a quote from Edward Teller: "von Neumann would carry on a conversation with my 3 year old son, and the two of them would talk as equals, and I sometimes wondered if he used the same principle when he talked to the rest of us."

srejkabout 3 hours ago

When you look at it holistically, von Neumann was more influential in science and mathematics in the 20th century than either Einstein or Planck. He wasn't as obvious a symbol of the scientific revolution, but his contributions to SO MANY THINGS at a fundamental level makes him stand out to me.

JoeAltmaierabout 3 hours ago

It's odd that even today, different disciplines are still silo'd. My son started a research cross-database search engine because different disciplies use different terms for nearly identical concepts. Even within medicine it's silo'd.

Trouble with that startup was, the medical folks with money don't use computer tools. And the students in training have no money.

flipping_beaconabout 2 hours ago

It's crazy that we talk about LLMs, AI/ML and what not but so many fields still don't use computation as much as we think they do simply because they cannot reliably keep up with the advancements happening almost everyday and people simply forgetting about backwards compatibility in their products

baruz21 minutes ago

A researcher submitted a paper to the medical journal _Diabetes care_ in the nineties that basically redescribed integral calculus as a novel finding. How’s that for a silo?

api7 minutes ago

I always say knowledge is like a sweater. Pull a thread and the whole thing unravels. Everything is connected so if you start somewhere and never stop learning you'll end up in every discipline. There's also a good old Weezer song called Undone for this.

sixtyj36 minutes ago

Is your son’s search engine somewhere available, please?

tomrod31 minutes ago

Nash's game theory dissertation was something von Neumann considered obvious and not particularly noteworthy, if I remember my lore right. He was among the first game theorists, focusing more on collaborative games than pure strategic/competitive games.

Einstein built on the shoulders of Riemann, Gauss, and others when considering the universe might be non-Euclidean!

All brilliant people, many singular minds of great repute, yet, all improved by the rest.

dempedempe11 minutes ago

Saying that von Neumann was one of the first game theorists undersells it.

He wrote the original book on game theory! The Theory of Games and Economic Behavior with Oskar Morgenstern.

Relatedly, MAD was his conception as well.

anthonypasq22 minutes ago

another famous piece of Von Neumann lore is that he constantly advocated nuking the Soviets.

nkozyraabout 2 hours ago

He's definitely the one guy from the 20th century I can't really reconcile his capability and breadth, other than being an alien or a time traveller.

snapetomabout 3 hours ago

Definitely my favorite physicist for the same reason you state. The notion that he just went around different fields and said “here’s how math can improve things,” invented some new approach, and moved on to another field to do it all over again just cracks me up.

harpersealtakoabout 2 hours ago

Nowadays we'd call that "engineer's disease". I wonder how many potential Von Neumanns were discouraged from branching out into other fields by jealous gatekeepers who assume that any interest in their field by "outsiders", especially technical people, is "epistemic trespassing".

helterskelter235 minutes ago

Mandelbrot did this too, but he created a lot of animosity in the process because he could be really abrasive.

delichonabout 2 hours ago

Shannon may be gaining on him.

cmaabout 2 hours ago

I vote for Wiener at this point

SimplyUnknownabout 4 hours ago

For a longer read, I can highly recommend the book "The Man from the Future" by Ananyo Bhattacharya. It's quite an easy read and extensively discusses the life and discoveries by John von Neumann in chronological order.

stevenwooabout 3 hours ago

I had to frequently pause my read to research a discovery in more depth to understand the significance of it and I got a chuckle when he marries his childhood sweetheart because she got no mention prior to that point in the book.

phba40 minutes ago

"Turing's Cathedral" by George Dyson is also great. It's a kind of broad biography of all the great minds that started the computer age.

lasersonabout 3 hours ago

I read this last year and also recommend!

offbeatportabout 2 hours ago

Books from before the age of AI will only become more precious over time. This is great.

zoltanoabout 2 hours ago

He's my favourite mathematician too. Loved The Man from the Future book. Can we get a frontier model named after him perhaps? "Johnny" would be a great codename imo

lwarfieldabout 2 hours ago

Von Nuemann is one of those names that when ever it comes up I sarcastically mentally note "John f***ing Neumann, AGAIN!". It's happened so many times in my studies that I think he might be the most important scientist to have ever lived.

He's also the inspiration for one of favorite characters in fiction, Sherkaner Underhill from A Deepness In The Sky*. :)

EvanAnderson35 minutes ago

> He's also the inspiration for one of favorite characters in fiction, Sherkaner Underhill from A Deepness In The Sky.

Oh, hell-- that totally makes sense and I completely missed it until now. Thanks for mentioning that-- it adds some additional depth to a book and a character I already enjoy a ton.

bmitc29 minutes ago

I wouldn't be surprised if he's at least partially an inspiration for the Dr. Felix Hoenikker character in Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle.

chasd00about 3 hours ago

Not sure what just happened but like 10 comments just vanished. Anyway, here's a wiki link to "The Martians" which was a group of Hungarian scientists and Von Neuman was a member.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Martians_(scientists)

"The Martians" (Hungarian: "A marslakók") were a group of prominent scientists (mostly, but not exclusively, physicists and mathematicians) of Hungarian Jewish descent who emigrated from Europe to the United States in the early half of the 20th century.[1]

Leo Szilard jokingly suggested that Hungary was a front for aliens from Mars."

rationalistabout 3 hours ago

You might not have "show dead" enabled in your settings. There is an antisemitic comment that was flagged and is now "dead" with a bunch of replies - so you would have seen those, and then now not see them if you don't have "show dead" enabled.

sillysaurusx13 minutes ago

I think that with showdead off, if a flagged comment has non-flagged replies, the toplevel comment will still show up as [flagged] and the replies will be visible. Flagged comments are usually collapsed, though, which might be why it seemed like the discussion tree disappeared.

Read the full thread on Hacker News →

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