62 ms·

The Unparalleled Genius of John von Neumann

636 points by jorgenveisdal 7y ago

j7ake 7y ago
Nice article. Are there any good biographies of John von Neumann that are highly recommended? EDIT: found it at the end of the article " For anyone interested in learning more about the life and work of John von Neumann, I especially recommend his friend Stanislaw Ulam’s 1958 essay John von Neumann 1903–1957 in the Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society 64 (3) pp 1–49 and the book John von Neumann by Norman Macrae (1992). "
- SamReidHughes 7y ago
  Apparently there are none. Judging by the Amazon reviews of Macrae, I’d pass. I found some other discussions of the question: https://www.reddit.com/r/math/comments/36ipik/good_biography_about_john_von_neumann/ https://www.reddit.com/r/math/comments/36ipik/good_biography... https://www.quora.com/What-is-a-good-biography-book-about-John-von-Neumann https://www.quora.com/What-is-a-good-biography-book-about-Jo...
  - jorgenveisdal 7y ago
    I tend to agree, but Macrae isn't bad.
- chmaynard 7y ago
  The author posted a reading list: https://medium.com/@JorgenVeisdal/reading-list-5d3018266f7d https://medium.com/@JorgenVeisdal/reading-list-5d3018266f7d
- rainwolf 7y ago
  I highly recommend "Turing's Cathedral" by George Dyson. I easily rate it n+1 stars out of n.
- davidwihl 7y ago
  The Martian’s Daughter written by his daughter who was also an intellectual. https://www.press.umich.edu/4655298/martians_daughter https://www.press.umich.edu/4655298/martians_daughter Given the success of “The Imitation Game” and “The Theory of Everything” I’m disappointed that no one has made a compelling movie about Von Neumann who I think is a far more interesting character both mentally and in terms of personality.
- jonjacky 7y ago
  There is this dual biography from 1980: John Von Neumann and Norbert Wiener : from mathematics to the technologies of life and death by Steve J Heims https://archive.org/details/johnvonneumannno00heim https://archive.org/details/johnvonneumannno00heim Here is a review by John McCarthy: http://jmc.stanford.edu/artificial-intelligence/reviews/heims.pdf http://jmc.stanford.edu/artificial-intelligence/reviews/heim...
biolurker1 7y ago
Wouldn't einstein qualify as the most intelligent human ever lived?
- jorgenveisdal 7y ago
  In terms of sheer power of computation, I would say clearly not. Take, for instance, his race against David Hilbert to get the equations of general relativity in correct form. It's not perfectly clear that Einstein was able to keep up with him, in finishing his own theory: https://medium.com/cantors-paradise/einstein-and-hilberts-race-to-generalize-relativity-6885f44e3cbe https://medium.com/cantors-paradise/einstein-and-hilberts-ra... In terms of creativity, perhaps so.
- goto11 7y ago
  He newer took an IQ test (or at least it isn't known) so nobody knows. Personally I think Mozart was smarter, but who knows.
  - zorked 7y ago
    And it's not like you can infer anything from an IQ test other than an IQ test result.
    - barry-cotter 7y ago
      IQ is positively correlated with health, educational achievement, job performance, income and occupational status and negatively correlated with out of wedlock childbirth and being convicted of a crime. Intelligence: Knowns and Unknowns, American Psychological Association http://differentialclub.wdfiles.com/local--files/definitions-structure-and-measurement/Intelligence-Knowns-and-unknowns.pdf http://differentialclub.wdfiles.com/local--files/definitions...
      - mvdwoord 7y ago
        Some people disagree. https://medium.com/incerto/iq-is-largely-a-pseudoscientific-swindle-f131c101ba39 https://medium.com/incerto/iq-is-largely-a-pseudoscientific-...
roca 7y ago
Awww, I was hoping they'd mention how Neumann was keen on launching a preemptive nuclear strike against the USSR.
- arethuza 7y ago
  "“If you say why not bomb them tomorrow, I say why not today? If you say today at 5 o’clock, I say why not one o’clock?” Hardly surprising that he was one of the influences on the character of Dr Strangelove. Was he a remarkable genius, absolutely - was he right about everything, definitely not.
  - ElFitz 7y ago
    This quote perfectly illustrates the unparalleled absurdity of contemplating nuclear warfare.
    - arethuza 7y ago
      He was hardly alone if favouring a "preventative war" - Curtis LeMay was another advocate - they thought it was the rational thing to do. How someone can rationally advocate the cold blooded killing of millions is, frankly, completely beyond me.
      - solveit 7y ago
        That's because we're lucky to live in a world where the cold war stayed cold, and LeMay and von Neumann were coming from half a century of the worst slaughter the world had ever seen.
        arethuza 7y ago
        We can be thankful that the likes of Eisenhower and later Kennedy, who lived through the very same times, recoiled from the prospect of initiating a greater slaughter than WW2.
danieltillett 7y ago
I have always wondered how close von Neumann was to the maximum human potential. Does he sit close the outer edge of possible human potential, or can greater geniuses be created? Is there anyone alive who even comes close to Johnny?
- anongraddebt 7y ago
  My guess is that each relatively difficult field (fields that require substantial thought... I guess you know it when you see it) has its freaks of nature: genetic anomalies that, for at least a brief moment, seem to transcend the other participants. In the 20th century, philosophy had Saul Kripke. Among other things, he published one of the seminal papers in the (at that time) nascent area of modal logic when he was 17. I have it on good authority from a professor friend that many - who know Kripke in a professional setting - regard him as having a sort of alien intelligence. Not to take away from Von Neumann, but there are at least a couple people each century who have these sorts of alien cognitive skills. Also, while there is probably some truth to them having a sort of alien intelligence, we can't disregard the contexual factors of their success. Von Neumann lived in a unique academic-historical period. A period where one could make lasting, foundational contributions to a variety of disciplines.
  - chalst 7y ago
    At the most charitable, Kripke was not generous in acknowledging influences. http://linguafranca.mirror.theinfo.org/Archive/whose.html http://linguafranca.mirror.theinfo.org/Archive/whose.html
    - anongraddebt 7y ago
      This is interesting. I hadn't heard of this dispute. I just read the Marcus paper from 1961 that is essential to Smith's thesis. I also read the back-and-forth rebuttals between Smith and Soames. I read the Marcus paper before reading the Smith and Soames papers. I don't really see how Soames' primary claim is not likely true. He says: "Marcus, along with certain other philosophers, do deserve credit for anticipating important aspects of contemporary theories of reference. However this credit in no way diminishes the seminal role of Saul Kripke." When reading the Marcus paper, you really have to start stretching and expanding her arguments if you want to claim that she did more than anticipate 'important aspects of contemporary theories of reference'. It should also be noted that Timothy Williamson (Oxford) has been one of the staunchest advocates for the proper appreciation of the work that Marcus produced, and yet he doesn't agree with Smith. But really, this is all probably secondary to the issues surrounding Kripke's importance. Naming and Necessity - like most paradigm shifting works - was not a one-trick pony. Kripke expanded on his possible world semantics, introduced distinctions like metaphysical vs epistemic necessity, laid waste to any residual belief in the merits of logical positivism, came up with the first succesful (at least, most see it as succesful) argument for the existence of synthetic a priori truths, etc. Moreover, Kripke came up with at least two fairly water tight arguments against the descriptivist theory he was going against. If Marcus was the first person to introduce this new theory of reference, than the theory was stillborn. Kripke (if we take him as having taken the theory from Marcus) actually explained the ins-and-outs of the theory, provided associated puzzles, addressed counterarguments, related it to other issues in analytical philosophy, etc. Lastly, Naming and Necessity was not the only impressive work of Kripke's. We would have to include his work on modal logic as well as his work on Wittgenstein. There are probably a number of puzzles and counterarguments that were never published that should be included as well. For example, Kripke once attended a conference on personal identity where a philospher had just presented a new argument in his talk that elicited a standing ovation from the rest of the philosophers in the room (this basically never happens at conferences). Kripke was asked to come up and comment on this new argument. He came up and provided a water tight refutation of it. Everyone in the room was taken back by this.
n_t 7y ago
You might like "Prisoner's Dilemma: John von Neumann, Game Theory, and the Puzzle of the Bomb" (https://www.amazon.com/Prisoners-Dilemma-Neumann-Theory-Puzzle/dp/038541580X https://www.amazon.com/Prisoners-Dilemma-Neumann-Theory-Puzz...)
yannis7 7y ago
there's a lazy sensationalist style on that article that I find off-putting -- the relevant Wikipedia page is more sober and actually (or because of that) makes you more in awe of the man in question.
- AjwadJaved 7y ago
  This article was published around his death day and is my favorite piece about him https://qualiacomputing.com/2018/06/21/john-von-neumann/ https://qualiacomputing.com/2018/06/21/john-von-neumann/
HNLurker2 7y ago
tl;dr he is Turing's cooler uncle and his Wikipedia page (wow comparable to Bertrand Russell)
keiferski 7y ago
Can anyone recommend readings on von Neumann that highlight his non-mathematical achievements? Obviously he was primarily a physicist and mathematician, but for a non-mathematician, the long list of academic publications is hard to interpret and appreciate. For example, more in the vein of these: - Reportedly, von Neumann possessed an eidetic memory, and so was able to recall complete novels and pages of the phone directory on command. This enabled him to accumulate an almost encyclopedic knowledge of what ever he read, such as the history of the Peloponnesian Wars, the Trial Joan of Arc and Byzantine history (Leonard, 2010). A Princeton professor of the latter topic once stated that by the time he was in his thirties, Johnny had greater expertise in Byzantine history than he did (Blair, 1957). - ...conversing in Ancient Greek at age six... - On his deathbed, he reportedly entertained his brother by reciting the first few lines of each page from Goethe’s Faust, word-for-word, by heart (Blair, 1957).
- ksec 7y ago
  So he has what's called Photographic Memory ?
  - deepaksurti 7y ago
    Not really. From the wikipedia page on eidetic memory [1]: ``` Although the terms eidetic memory and photographic memory are popularly used interchangeably,[1] they are also distinguished, with eidetic memory referring to the ability to view memories like photographs for a few minutes,[3] and photographic memory referring to the ability to recall pages of text or numbers, or similar, in great detail.[4][5] When the concepts are distinguished, eidetic memory is reported to occur in a small number of children and as something generally not found in adults,[2][6] while true photographic memory has never been demonstrated to exist. ``` [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eidetic_memory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eidetic_memory
    - pas 7y ago
      I've always wondered about that, because a few savants like Kim Peek are/were able to recall everything they read. "He could speed through a book in about an hour and remember almost everything he had read, memorizing vast amounts of information in subjects ranging from history and literature, geography and numbers to sports, music and dates. Peek read by scanning the left page with his left eye, then the right page with his right eye. According to an article in The Times newspaper, he could accurately recall the contents of at least 12,000 books."
mikorym 7y ago
In an answer to the question of why there is no evidence of intelligent life beyond earth despite the high probability of it existing, Szilárd responded: "They are already here among us – they just call themselves Hungarians." [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Martians_(scientists) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Martians_(scientists)
- bloopernova 7y ago
  I went to Budapest on a day trip (hooray for Easyjet) back in the early 2000s, and can attest to this. I definitely felt like I was a stranger in a strange land.
- Scaevolus 7y ago
  For a depressing analysis on where all the Hungarian geniuses came from and why they vanished: https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/05/26/the-atomic-bomb-considered-as-hungarian-high-school-science-fair-project/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/05/26/the-atomic-bomb-consid...
  - mirekrusin 7y ago
    He mentions Curie as non-Ashkenazi, but even with her I don't know, she was born Polish with full name "Maria Salomea Skłodowska"(-Curie), her middle name "Salomea", given after her grandmother sounds to me like Jewish origin. I wonder how percentage of Nobel price winners/etc. would look like if you'd really dig deeper few generations or did genetic tests.
    - mikeyouse 7y ago
      Marie's grandchildren are still alive and could presumably be genetically tested to see their heritage if there was any real question. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H%C3%A9l%C3%A8ne_Langevin-Joliot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H%C3%A9l%C3%A8ne_Langevin-Joli...
    - codingslave 7y ago
      I have a hypothesis that almost all of the greatest intellectual achievements come from a very small number of bloodlines. I really doubt the idea that people are born and some just end up as the smartest in generations, I think theres more to the story
yannis7 7y ago
von Neumann, Oppenheimer, Bohr, Einstein, Rutherford, Turing, Teller, Szilard, Wigner, Meitner... the list goes on... -- how did that time produce so many people of colossal intellect? War certainly can't be the primary factor, given that many of them were brilliant/productive even before WWI
- 0-_-0 7y ago
  4 on your list are Hungarian, and 3 of them went to the same high school: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fasori_Gimn%C3%A1zium https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fasori_Gimn%C3%A1zium Hungary had a great education system at the time.
  - qnsi 7y ago
    Or great genes
    - jjgreen 7y ago
      Or there's some kind of magical properties of paprika that the rest of the world hasn't yet noticed ...
  - chx 7y ago
    > Hungary had a great education system at the time. I seriously doubt you could back this. You are generalizing from a single school. Might as well argue that socialist Hungary had a great education system because of Fazekas. Neither are true. I happen to have a maths teacher degree from a Hungarian university and we studied Hungarian education history and I learned much more about education systems later on my own (and this is not to say this university maths teacher course was a good one, quite the opposite). If you want to know what great education at the time looked like, read up on Summerhill -- it was founded in 1921 but humanistic education has been around for centuries.
    - nabla9 7y ago
      Mathematics culture and mathematical pedagogy in Hungary has legendary reputation. I don't know how their system works now,but at least up to 80s or 90s it was seen as being the highest level. It emphasized creativity, communication and problem solving. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-28582-5_5 https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-28582-5_...
dr_dshiv 7y ago
Von Neumann invented a novel paradigm for computing using harmonic integration of analog oscillations. The patent was granted after his death. While there were a few prototypes in the 50s, the transistor killed it. A fully functional version of this computational architecture has never been built, to my knowledge: https://patents.google.com/patent/US2815488A/en https://patents.google.com/patent/US2815488A/en
- DSingularity 7y ago
  What advantages would this have?
  - dr_dshiv 7y ago
    Consciousness, primarily. Ha! No, but the computer would resemble brain oscillations and harmonic integration much more than linear clock cycles. We still don't know much about how the brain uses rhythms and harmonies to compute, but it does (brainwave bands are octaves, I.e. harmonic doublings, 2.5,5,10,20,40hz)
    - TaupeRanger 7y ago
      Any further resources on this phenomenon? Seems very interesting as an area of theoretical exploration.
- adamnemecek 7y ago
  Do you have any more info on this?
  - timmaxw 7y ago
    See my comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21551082 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21551082
- timmaxw 7y ago
  For anyone who's interested in more detail: This type of computer is also called a "parametron" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parametron https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parametron). A Japanese researcher named Eiichi Goto independently invented it around the same time as von Neumann, and developed it much further than von Neumann did, so the idea is more often associated with Goto than with von Neumann. The basic idea is that if a nonlinear harmonic oscillator is driven at twice its resonant frequency, it will oscillate stably in either of two phases. The two phases represent "0" and "1". If the driving signal is switched off and on again, the oscillator will arbitrarily "pick" a phase to stabilize on. If it's exposed to an input signal from another oscillator as it's turning on, it will always pick the same phase as the input signal. This makes it possible to copy a "0" or "1" from one oscillator to another. If the oscillator is exposed to input signals from several other oscillators, it will pick by "majority vote". Finally, a NOT-gate can be built by inverting the signal polarity. This set of primitives is sufficient to build arbitrary logic gates and flip-flops. Goto's paper has an excellent explanation and more detail: Goto, E. (1959). The Parametron, a Digital Computing Element Which Utilizes Parametric Oscillation. Proceedings of the IRE, 47(8), 1304–1316. doi:10.1109/jrproc.1959.287195 (PDF available at https://sci-hub.tw/10.1109/JRPROC.1959.287195 https://sci-hub.tw/10.1109/JRPROC.1959.287195)
chx 7y ago
> In 1945, von Neumann proposed a description for a computer architecture now known as the von Neumann architecture, Do note that he proposed a description but it wasn't his idea. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Draft_of_a_Report_on_the_EDVAC#Controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Draft_of_a_Report_on_the... > some on the EDVAC design team contended that the stored-program concept had evolved out of meetings at the University of Pennsylvania's Moore School of Electrical Engineering predating von Neumann's activity as a consultant there, and that much of the work represented in the First Draft was no more than a translation of the discussed concepts into the language of formal logic in which von Neumann was fluent.
- dmazin 7y ago
  Yes! It’s a pretty big controversy so far as computing goes and a very interesting read. ENIAC (ISBN 978-0802713483) is a good account that includes it. I have to wonder what else gets washed away in all the myth-making about these guys.
- dr_dshiv 7y ago
  He also posthumously patented a "non-von Neumann" architecture that has never been built, to my knowledge. I'm surprised that all the attention on quantum computing hasn't revived the idea. https://patents.google.com/patent/US2815488A/en https://patents.google.com/patent/US2815488A/en
  - cr0sh 7y ago
    Many of the examples proposed sound similar to other devices and things used in - for example - flash memory, DRAM, and other similar technologies. Based on what I could see from the patent, it looks like an exploration of using such elements in place of (then) vacuum tubes; it also seems like it might also use non-linear properties; somewhat of an "analog computer" in a way. There also seem to be hints at these elements being used in an "artificial neuron" manner (hardware-based artificial neural networks and neurons were a topic of interest at the time). Strangely (I may have missed it - I only skimmed the patent) the use of the transistor seems to be missing (again, not sure)...but if this is true, it may be because again - it seems to be exploring non-linear storage and response as memory and computational elements. The ideas of using - say - capacitive and inductive elements for memory elements (at a minimum) was known back then; it was also known how to use inductive-only elements for amplification and switching purposes (google "magnetic amplifiers" - the tech goes back a long way). But this patent seems to be using both in a different manner for a combination computation and memory (again, similar to an artificial neuron). It's a very interesting patent; in a similar scope as to Turing's writings on neural network systems. Thank you for bringing it to our attention.
signa11 7y ago
i always find it quite strange that for some reason, norbert weiner, is generally excluded from such paeans...
- dr_dshiv 7y ago
  I think he will be popular in the future as cybernetic theory provides much a much more reliable design viewpoint than "artificial intelligence"
- eigenvalue 7y ago
  I think some of it has to do with his famously difficult personality. Colleagues found him unbearably arrogant, and he seemed to have a chip on his shoulder, probably arising from his highly contentious relationship with his father. Von Neumann on the other hand was reportedly extremely charming and funny, and great fun to have at parties.
- jonjacky 7y ago
  See the dual biography of von Neumann and Wiener that I linked above.
lqet 7y ago
"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." - Edward Teller See [0] for a demonstration. I watched a documentary from the 80ies a long time ago. A mathematician (can't remember his name) who worked with von Neumann in Los Alamanos was interviewed. He described von Neumann's last weeks in the hospital - the cancer had already metastasized into his brain. The mathematician said something along this lines (I am citing from memory): "von Neumann was constantly visited by colleagues, who wanted to discuss their latest work with him. He tried to keep up, struggling, like in old times. But he couldn't. Try to imagine having one of the greatest minds maybe in the history of mankind. And then try to imagine losing this gift. I was terrible. I have never seen a man experience greater suffering." Marina von Neumann (his daughter) later wrote this about his final weeks: "After only a few minutes, my father made what seemed to be a very peculiar and frightening request from a man who was widely regarded as one of the greatest - if not the greatest - mathematician of the 20th century. He wanted me to give him two numbers, like 7 and 6 or 10 and 3, and ask him to tell me their sum. For as long as I can remember, I had always known that my father's major source of self-regard, what he felt to be the very essence of his being, was his incredible mental capacity. In this late stage of his illness, he must have been aware that this capacity was deteriorating rapidly, and the panic that caused was worse than any physical pain. In demanding that I test him on these elementary sums, he was seeking reassurance that at least a small fragment of this intellectual powers remained." [1] [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLbllFHBQM4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLbllFHBQM4 [1] https://www.amazon.com/Martians-Daughter-Memoir-Marina-Whitman/dp/0472118420 https://www.amazon.com/Martians-Daughter-Memoir-Marina-Whitm...
- mvf0 7y ago
  Here is that exact documentary you were thinking of [0]. It's really a fantastic documentary on the incredible feats of von Neumann and worth a watch by everyone here. That person you quoted was Edward Teller and the interview can be found at 54:58 [1]. I read somewhere that the young boy asking von Neumann a question at 6:13 [2] is actually Bill Clinton. Can anyone verify this? [0] https://youtu.be/Y2jiQXI6nrE https://youtu.be/Y2jiQXI6nrE [1] https://youtu.be/Y2jiQXI6nrE?t=3299 https://youtu.be/Y2jiQXI6nrE?t=3299 [2] https://youtu.be/Y2jiQXI6nrE?t=371 https://youtu.be/Y2jiQXI6nrE?t=371
hagap 7y ago
Love it!
calhoun137 7y ago
I am so happy to see this article about Von Neumann on HN!!! I have been posting about him on here for years, and have read all his books, but not as many of his papers as I would like, they are really hard! I have been working for many years now on continuing his theories of weather control technology and self-replicating machines. He is my absolute personal hero and the scientist who, far above all others, I consider to be the one in whose footsteps I want to follow.
- kragen 7y ago
  That's interesting! Have you made progress on self-replication? I think it's a very important problem. I've made some notes categorized under topics/self-replication.html in http://canonical.org/~kragen/dercuano-20191110.tar.gz http://canonical.org/~kragen/dercuano-20191110.tar.gz, but of course I'm no Johnny von Neumann.
  - calhoun137 7y ago
    Von Nueman is on the record as saying he believed computers were a sub field of self replicating machines. I believe they will be very important in the future and will have many applications. Not really, unfortunately. I think it would be fun to build a 3d printer that can replicate itself, but have not tried building any prototypes because besides being too expensive I also havent taken my research into that far enough. I am a very ambitious person and have big plans for the future! What I have done on this subject besides reading about it is very theoretical and abstract, its more of an aspiration right now than an active research project to be completely honest.
    - kragen 7y ago
      I'm interested to hear what you think; my notes talk a lot about how to make things less expensive.
    - wes-k 7y ago
      You may want to check out https://reprap.org/wiki/RepRap https://reprap.org/wiki/RepRap which is exactly this type of 3D printer. I don’t think it’s 100% though.
hyperpallium 7y ago
> Young man, in mathematics you don't understand things. You just get used to them.
billfruit 7y ago
Was his work in quantum mechanics Nobel-worthy? If so he'd be on the list of greats not to receive the prize.
okareaman 7y ago
I think moderators should mark articles behind paywalls as such, I already don't click on wapo or nytimes links but you never can tell with medium. I'm retired on a fixed income and I can't justify in my budget subscribing to these places. It makes me sad when I can't read an article that might otherwise fascinate me. One solution would be to never click on medium links, but then I'd miss the ones that are free.
- quomopete 7y ago
  Medium really botched the paywall approach and I couldn't possibly agree with you more. It is so inconsistently applied and quite honestly I can't justify spending 5 dollars a month on a "publisher" whose content is so variable. Some Medium articles are really good, others are baseless clickbait, it's hard to tell until you read the article and already sunk the time and the money.
  - okareaman 7y ago
    I'm thinking of writing an extension that would go grab the first page of each link and tell me if they want me to pay. The extension would turn the link red if so. How consistently can I get this right though? I can't just go by domain name because sometimes I have free articles left, on New Yorker for example. I agree with you on Medium. I was more angry until I found out it is up to the individual authors to turn on the paywall for their article so they can get paid. 60 dollars a year for hit or miss medium content is a bit rich. They must think they are in the same league as NYT or WAPO
mikorym 7y ago
> Needless to say, von Neumann‘s main contributions to the atomic bomb would not be as a lieutenant in the reserve of the ordnance department, but rather in the concept and design of the explosive lenses that were needed to compress the plutonium core of the Fat Man weapon that was later dropped on Nagasaki. What are the equations that govern an atomic bomb? I don't want to say that I am asking for a friend... /s I assume that by now the relevant equations would be well known anyway?
- eigenvalue 7y ago
  The equations they are referring to do not concern the nuclear aspects of an atomic bomb. They describe how to set up the geometry of conventional plastic explosives (different kinds of explosives that burn at different speeds) in just the right configuration so that the propagating shock waves interfere with each other to result in a spherical shock wave that pushes the core of the bomb (the radioactive part) towards a single fixed point at the center. If any of this is off even slightly, the forces will not be in balance and the core materials will shoot out of the weak point, rather than uniformly compress to bring the nuclear material to the critical point where the fission is self-sustaining.
ubertakter 7y ago
Pretty good article. Can't wait to read other, less sensational articles recommended here. One particular error in the article stood out to me: the Trinity test site is in White Sands, New Mexico, not Nevada. This was immediately noticeable because I've been to the Trinity site. Von Neumann probes pop up in sci-fi. One of my favorite uses of them is in the Bobiverse books: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/32109569-we-are-legion?from_search=true&qid=rikQuF7074&rank=1 https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/32109569-we-are-legion?f...
clickok 7y ago
Von Neumann is something of a hero of mine, in part because of how he demonstrates (by example) that you can achieve surpassing insight by patiently applying logic and analysis to whatever problem is at hand. But also because he shows that you didn't have to be narrowly focused in your area of competence, you could pursue other interests and even excel in those, even if they aren't the things that you're known for. He really liked history, particularly European history. There's some examples of this in his letters[0], but my favorite von Neumann story on this topic is how he managed to deduce the answer to a literary magazine's poetry trivia question when queried by his brother. They would both be teenagers at the time, and the magazine was in English, as opposed to their native martian, yet John got the solution at once. Paraphrasing from here[1], although his brother's limited run biography/reminiscences has the story too. The prize contest had the lines They know this well my baron and my men Gascony, England, Normandy, Poitou That I had never follower so low Whom I would leave in prison to my gain I say this not as a reproach to them But prisoner I am John replied immediately: "Richard Coeur de Lion". "Did you know the poem?" "No." "Then how did you identify the poet?" "Very simple" he said. "Gascony, England, Normandy, and Poitou were in one feudal hand only once during the early Plantagenets, and from there it was quite easy to associate with Richard's crusades and European captivity. But of course this is a translation, since quite obviously the early Plantagenets spoke Norman-Midieval French." His brother then goes on to state: I found out much later that the translation was that of Henry Adams, and the Prison Song is only one of Richard's most perfect poems, usually referred to as gems of English literature! --- 0. One to his daughter springs to mind, where he expresses fatherly concern about her getting married during her undergrad-- he's worried that she's too young and this will derail her career. After that's addressed, he then moves on to talking about one of her term papers, and proceeds to suggest an insightful take on-- I believe, I haven't read the letters in a decade-- some medieval French bishop. The juxtaposition of concerned father plus European historian in a man more known for axioms and automata was jarring. 1. "The Legacy of John Von Neumann" from the American Mathematical Society, https://books.google.ca/books?id=XBK-r0gS0YMC&dq https://books.google.ca/books?id=XBK-r0gS0YMC&dq (see pg. 22-23)
csbartus 7y ago
just one thought: everybody reading these words is reading it on a von Neumann architecture computer
undebuggable 7y ago
Interesting anecdote from from the biography of Stanisław Ulam, a close friend of von Neumann. Von Neumann was apparently fascinated by the history of the ancient Greece which he learned by reading Thucydides and Herodotus. Once he was talking with Stan about the Siege of Melos[1] and how violent the human nature can be when driven by pride and ambition set to pursue a certain goal. That were late 30s and catastrophes like Lidice[2] and countless others on the soil which today are Poland and Belarus were soon to happen. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Melos https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Melos [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lidice_massacre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lidice_massacre
sunstone 7y ago
So, kind of like Walter Pitts but born with a silver spoon in his mouth rather than being abandoned to the streets of Chicago.
ironyman 7y ago
I've recently been engrossed by the question of how geniuses and highly intelligent people think. There's bits and pieces of information online. What I'd really like to see, though, is (a) geniuses describe their thought process and (b) a smart person voicing is interior monologue while attacking a problem. 1) Do you know of any information like this? Link? 2) Otherwise: do you think in a way that's different (better) than the average person?
- hgytr 7y ago
  I heard that Tesla could effectively "run" experiments in his mind, not just visualize them. Another pointer is that some "schools of thought" divide the art of thought into ability to visualize and ability to analyze where the latter has to be built upon the former and only when the former is perfected. My personal belief is that being a genius is about the ability to keep in mind many things at a time without losing details.
  - pas 7y ago
    I read this about Edison. Also he read very fast, the librarians though he did not like the books that's why he was returning all of them every next week. Also what usually geniuses can do is process information a lot. Read and write many papers. Eg Terrence Tao. His blog is always going strong, the polymath projects, plus regular teaching, plus his own (other) research. Alexander Grothendieck, wrote books full of brand new ideas about very abstract math. Amazing insights. Ability to work with unfamiliar cutting-edge things while keeping focus, while communicating them to others.
- williamDafoe 7y ago
  The most brilliant guy I ever knew was a founder of the field of computational geometry. He has probably co-authored 500 papers by now. he was a paper engine and would hold court with 10 or 15 people and they would all figure out how to prove the theorems in a paper. His students said that when solving problems he just never seem to to go in the wrong direction ever at all! At age 29 - already a full professor - he got the NSF Wasserman award - top researcher - all fields of science. His dad was a farmer in Austria. He was the first computer scientist to ever get the Wasserman award. Herbert Edelsbruner.
rmp33 7y ago
A question to mathematicians: what does your mind look like when you prove a theorem? There is a comment here, saying that many hard theorems require one to build a complex branch of math and use it to prove a single statement. So I asked myself: what does it really look like to prove a theorem at such level? I can tell what's going on in a programmer's mind. Software is very much like an imaginary mechanism and software engineers are mechanics. For example, this site is a database connected with a html page, so a programmer literally imagines a big gray building that means the database, another building that means the html page and a pipe that connects them. The database has a few tables: one for user accounts, another for posts like this, another for comments. So a programmer imagines 3 big blocks inside that building that are connected with pipes transferring data. Next to the database there is a controller device that sends and receives messages in the pipe connecting it to the users. This analogy continues to tiny things like classes, methods and variables. The entire HN forum looks like a big multi-dimensional city-like structure with numerous pipes connecting pieces together. Experienced programmers not only organize this city well, but can also predict and eliminate complexity, e.g. they know that if you put that kind of building over there, others will inevitable connect to it tens of pipes and the entire city will be a mess, where you see a pipe and have no idea what it connects to and what will happen if you cut it.
- Noumenon72 7y ago
  I think you are experiencing "typical mind fallacy". https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/baTWMegR42PAsH9qJ/generalizing-from-one-example-realizing-it/ https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/baTWMegR42PAsH9qJ/generalizi... I imagine there are programmers who build objects by imagining people asking them questions and thinking what the objects would answer, or all kinds of other things. People for whom Spring's Repository/Service/Controller/View are real things with personalities or flavors. I tend to think in a mix of "If I could just tell the computer what to do in English, what would I say?" (function names) and "Whose responsibility is this? Is this really their job?" (classes).
- williamDafoe 7y ago
  I can say, based on proving new NP-completeness complexity theorems and also optimal algorithms in my CS Theory PhD thesis, it's like a little orgasm light turned on in my brain for about 36h. Not as intense but definitely an extreme glow of elation that I carried around for almost 2d. Nothing like it since ....
fahrixds 7y ago
Can anyone recommend readings on von Neumann that highlight his non-mathematical achievements? Obviously he was primarily a physicist and mathematician, but for a non-mathematician, the long list of academic publications is hard to interpret and appreciate. For example, more in the vein of these: - Reportedly, von Neumann possessed an eidetic memory, and so was able to recall complete novels and pages of the phone directory on command. This enabled him to accumulate an almost encyclopedic knowledge of what ever he read, such as the history of the Peloponnesian Wars, the Trial Joan of Arc and Byzantine history (Leonard, 2010). A Princeton professor of the latter topic once stated that by the time he was in his thirties, Johnny had greater expertise in Byzantine history than he did (Blair, 1957). - ...conversing in Ancient Greek at age six... - On his deathbed, he reportedly entertained his brother by reciting the first few lines of each page from Goethe’s Faust, word-for-word, by heart (Blair, 1957).
pfdietz 7y ago
That excerpt from Goedel's letter leaves out the most interesting part: he talks about what is essentially the P=NP problem!
hi41 7y ago
I am curious to know. Why does the Jewish community have a disproportionately large number of extremely intelligent people as evidenced by the number of Nobel laureates and other great intellectuals?
- Y14NZZRhRT5 7y ago
  Because they have higher than average intelligence, thus having "disproportionately large number of extremely intelligent people". I doubt their distribution is not normal.
- stared 7y ago
  See "The Atomic Bomb Considered As Hungarian High School Science Fair Project" https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/05/26/the-atomic-bomb-considered-as-hungarian-high-school-science-fair-project/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/05/26/the-atomic-bomb-consid... and "Hungarian Education II: Four Nobel Truths" https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/05/29/four-nobel-truths/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/05/29/four-nobel-truths/ by Scott Alexander.
- tim333 7y ago
  There is some interesting genetic theorising https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashkenazi_Jewish_intelligence#Proposed_genetic_explanations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashkenazi_Jewish_intelligence#...
- RivieraKid 7y ago
  I was interested about that too and after some research the likely explanation is that people with an Ashkenazi ancestry have a higher intelligence thanks to genetics.
- b0rsuk 7y ago
  I heard it's preference for non-physical work (lawyers, doctors, bankers, artists, writers...). Also, an old Polish novel "Lalka" by Bolesław Prus says Jews have an admiration for intellect and charades is one of their favorite family past-times.
- williamDafoe 7y ago
tehjoker 7y ago
Was hoping for a parallel computing joke. :(
tim333 7y ago
He was also the originator of the term singularity in the accelerating progress of technology sense. Interesting to see how that one pans out.
- williamDafoe 7y ago
  Yeah as I understand it that ain't going to happen for a thousand years, minimum ...
  - tim333 7y ago
    I'd guess quicker but time will tell.
archeantus 7y ago
It must have been so much harder to be brilliant back then. Now we Just have Google for everything. Imagine what these guys could have accomplished with the computing power/tools of today.
audition 7y ago
von Neumann was very anti-Soviet in his political views, yet he worked with (and was co-inventor on a nuclear bomb patent) with fellow nuclear weapons scientist Klaus Fuchs. Fuchs was a spy who passed von Neumann's classified work on to the Soviets. Despite his evident genius in so many areas, von Neumann apparently failed to discern the motivations of his colleague.
neop1x 7y ago
I have a feeling that modern society doesn't motivate scientistis and mathematicians enough. It's easier and better-paid to do some marketing, big data or game industry job. Tech startups are raising millions to develop remotely controlled lightbulbs or multiplier AR chess games and schools are lowering requirements for students to pass as politicians want to show the increasing number of graduates.
- sgillen 7y ago
  I think a big part of that is there are too many people inherently interested in doing science. In fact there are already a lot more grads coming out with science degrees than there are jobs, and math is even worse. Although these positions have less pay, the competition is probably more fierce than for the positions you mentioned (although I think game-dev has a similar issue). This is a problem but it's a good one to have, we have a lot of people out their willing to make science their life's work even without these external motivators.
hootbootscoot 7y ago
The title contains a lovely pun.
- hootbootscoot 7y ago
  "unparalleled" - serial Von Neumann machine, get it? get it? nyuk nyuk
artur_makly 7y ago
“Johnny built, at the Institute for Advanced Study, an experimental elec- tronic calculator, popularly known as the joniac, which eventually became the pilot model for similar machines all over the country. Some of the basic prin- ciples developed in the joniac are used even today in the fastest and most modern calculators. To design the machine, Johnny and his co-workers tried to imitate some of the known operations of the live brain. This is the aspect which led him to study neurology, to seek out men in the fields of neurology and psychiatry, to attend many meetings on these subjects, and, eventu- ally, to give lectures to such groups on the possibilities of copying an extremely simplified model of the living brain for man-made machines. ” From his book - “The Computer and The Brain” https://ia800800.us.archive.org/4/items/TheComputerAndTheBrain/The%20Computer%20and%20The%20Brain_text.pdf https://ia800800.us.archive.org/4/items/TheComputerAndTheBra...
artur_makly 7y ago
Hans Bethe explains in astounding articulate detail how John guided their final Atom Bomb design : https://youtu.be/Y2jiQXI6nrE?t=33m34s https://youtu.be/Y2jiQXI6nrE?t=33m34s

636 points by jorgenveisdal 7y ago

Nice article. Are there any good biographies of John von Neumann that are highly recommended? EDIT: found it at the end of the article " For anyone interested in learning more about the life and work of John von Neumann, I especially recommend his friend Stanislaw Ulam’s 1958 essay John von Neumann 1903–1957 in the Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society 64 (3) pp 1–49 and the book John von Neumann by Norman Macrae (1992). "

SamReidHughes 7y ago
Apparently there are none. Judging by the Amazon reviews of Macrae, I’d pass. I found some other discussions of the question: https://www.reddit.com/r/math/comments/36ipik/good_biography_about_john_von_neumann/ https://www.reddit.com/r/math/comments/36ipik/good_biography... https://www.quora.com/What-is-a-good-biography-book-about-John-von-Neumann https://www.quora.com/What-is-a-good-biography-book-about-Jo...
- jorgenveisdal 7y ago
  I tend to agree, but Macrae isn't bad.
chmaynard 7y ago
The author posted a reading list: https://medium.com/@JorgenVeisdal/reading-list-5d3018266f7d https://medium.com/@JorgenVeisdal/reading-list-5d3018266f7d
rainwolf 7y ago
I highly recommend "Turing's Cathedral" by George Dyson. I easily rate it n+1 stars out of n.
davidwihl 7y ago
The Martian’s Daughter written by his daughter who was also an intellectual. https://www.press.umich.edu/4655298/martians_daughter https://www.press.umich.edu/4655298/martians_daughter Given the success of “The Imitation Game” and “The Theory of Everything” I’m disappointed that no one has made a compelling movie about Von Neumann who I think is a far more interesting character both mentally and in terms of personality.
jonjacky 7y ago
There is this dual biography from 1980: John Von Neumann and Norbert Wiener : from mathematics to the technologies of life and death by Steve J Heims https://archive.org/details/johnvonneumannno00heim https://archive.org/details/johnvonneumannno00heim Here is a review by John McCarthy: http://jmc.stanford.edu/artificial-intelligence/reviews/heims.pdf http://jmc.stanford.edu/artificial-intelligence/reviews/heim...

biolurker1 7y ago

Wouldn't einstein qualify as the most intelligent human ever lived?

jorgenveisdal 7y ago
In terms of sheer power of computation, I would say clearly not. Take, for instance, his race against David Hilbert to get the equations of general relativity in correct form. It's not perfectly clear that Einstein was able to keep up with him, in finishing his own theory: https://medium.com/cantors-paradise/einstein-and-hilberts-race-to-generalize-relativity-6885f44e3cbe https://medium.com/cantors-paradise/einstein-and-hilberts-ra... In terms of creativity, perhaps so.
goto11 7y ago
He newer took an IQ test (or at least it isn't known) so nobody knows. Personally I think Mozart was smarter, but who knows.
- zorked 7y ago
  And it's not like you can infer anything from an IQ test other than an IQ test result.
  - barry-cotter 7y ago
    IQ is positively correlated with health, educational achievement, job performance, income and occupational status and negatively correlated with out of wedlock childbirth and being convicted of a crime. Intelligence: Knowns and Unknowns, American Psychological Association http://differentialclub.wdfiles.com/local--files/definitions-structure-and-measurement/Intelligence-Knowns-and-unknowns.pdf http://differentialclub.wdfiles.com/local--files/definitions...
    - mvdwoord 7y ago
      Some people disagree. https://medium.com/incerto/iq-is-largely-a-pseudoscientific-swindle-f131c101ba39 https://medium.com/incerto/iq-is-largely-a-pseudoscientific-...

roca 7y ago

Awww, I was hoping they'd mention how Neumann was keen on launching a preemptive nuclear strike against the USSR.

arethuza 7y ago
"“If you say why not bomb them tomorrow, I say why not today? If you say today at 5 o’clock, I say why not one o’clock?” Hardly surprising that he was one of the influences on the character of Dr Strangelove. Was he a remarkable genius, absolutely - was he right about everything, definitely not.
- ElFitz 7y ago
  This quote perfectly illustrates the unparalleled absurdity of contemplating nuclear warfare.
  - arethuza 7y ago
    He was hardly alone if favouring a "preventative war" - Curtis LeMay was another advocate - they thought it was the rational thing to do. How someone can rationally advocate the cold blooded killing of millions is, frankly, completely beyond me.
    - solveit 7y ago
      That's because we're lucky to live in a world where the cold war stayed cold, and LeMay and von Neumann were coming from half a century of the worst slaughter the world had ever seen.
      - arethuza 7y ago
        We can be thankful that the likes of Eisenhower and later Kennedy, who lived through the very same times, recoiled from the prospect of initiating a greater slaughter than WW2.

danieltillett 7y ago

I have always wondered how close von Neumann was to the maximum human potential. Does he sit close the outer edge of possible human potential, or can greater geniuses be created? Is there anyone alive who even comes close to Johnny?

anongraddebt 7y ago
My guess is that each relatively difficult field (fields that require substantial thought... I guess you know it when you see it) has its freaks of nature: genetic anomalies that, for at least a brief moment, seem to transcend the other participants. In the 20th century, philosophy had Saul Kripke. Among other things, he published one of the seminal papers in the (at that time) nascent area of modal logic when he was 17. I have it on good authority from a professor friend that many - who know Kripke in a professional setting - regard him as having a sort of alien intelligence. Not to take away from Von Neumann, but there are at least a couple people each century who have these sorts of alien cognitive skills. Also, while there is probably some truth to them having a sort of alien intelligence, we can't disregard the contexual factors of their success. Von Neumann lived in a unique academic-historical period. A period where one could make lasting, foundational contributions to a variety of disciplines.
- chalst 7y ago
  At the most charitable, Kripke was not generous in acknowledging influences. http://linguafranca.mirror.theinfo.org/Archive/whose.html http://linguafranca.mirror.theinfo.org/Archive/whose.html
  - anongraddebt 7y ago
    This is interesting. I hadn't heard of this dispute. I just read the Marcus paper from 1961 that is essential to Smith's thesis. I also read the back-and-forth rebuttals between Smith and Soames. I read the Marcus paper before reading the Smith and Soames papers. I don't really see how Soames' primary claim is not likely true. He says: "Marcus, along with certain other philosophers, do deserve credit for anticipating important aspects of contemporary theories of reference. However this credit in no way diminishes the seminal role of Saul Kripke." When reading the Marcus paper, you really have to start stretching and expanding her arguments if you want to claim that she did more than anticipate 'important aspects of contemporary theories of reference'. It should also be noted that Timothy Williamson (Oxford) has been one of the staunchest advocates for the proper appreciation of the work that Marcus produced, and yet he doesn't agree with Smith. But really, this is all probably secondary to the issues surrounding Kripke's importance. Naming and Necessity - like most paradigm shifting works - was not a one-trick pony. Kripke expanded on his possible world semantics, introduced distinctions like metaphysical vs epistemic necessity, laid waste to any residual belief in the merits of logical positivism, came up with the first succesful (at least, most see it as succesful) argument for the existence of synthetic a priori truths, etc. Moreover, Kripke came up with at least two fairly water tight arguments against the descriptivist theory he was going against. If Marcus was the first person to introduce this new theory of reference, than the theory was stillborn. Kripke (if we take him as having taken the theory from Marcus) actually explained the ins-and-outs of the theory, provided associated puzzles, addressed counterarguments, related it to other issues in analytical philosophy, etc. Lastly, Naming and Necessity was not the only impressive work of Kripke's. We would have to include his work on modal logic as well as his work on Wittgenstein. There are probably a number of puzzles and counterarguments that were never published that should be included as well. For example, Kripke once attended a conference on personal identity where a philospher had just presented a new argument in his talk that elicited a standing ovation from the rest of the philosophers in the room (this basically never happens at conferences). Kripke was asked to come up and comment on this new argument. He came up and provided a water tight refutation of it. Everyone in the room was taken back by this.

n_t 7y ago

You might like "Prisoner's Dilemma: John von Neumann, Game Theory, and the Puzzle of the Bomb" (https://www.amazon.com/Prisoners-Dilemma-Neumann-Theory-Puzzle/dp/038541580X https://www.amazon.com/Prisoners-Dilemma-Neumann-Theory-Puzz...)

yannis7 7y ago

there's a lazy sensationalist style on that article that I find off-putting -- the relevant Wikipedia page is more sober and actually (or because of that) makes you more in awe of the man in question.

AjwadJaved 7y ago
This article was published around his death day and is my favorite piece about him https://qualiacomputing.com/2018/06/21/john-von-neumann/ https://qualiacomputing.com/2018/06/21/john-von-neumann/

HNLurker2 7y ago

tl;dr he is Turing's cooler uncle and his Wikipedia page (wow comparable to Bertrand Russell)

keiferski 7y ago

Can anyone recommend readings on von Neumann that highlight his non-mathematical achievements? Obviously he was primarily a physicist and mathematician, but for a non-mathematician, the long list of academic publications is hard to interpret and appreciate. For example, more in the vein of these: - Reportedly, von Neumann possessed an eidetic memory, and so was able to recall complete novels and pages of the phone directory on command. This enabled him to accumulate an almost encyclopedic knowledge of what ever he read, such as the history of the Peloponnesian Wars, the Trial Joan of Arc and Byzantine history (Leonard, 2010). A Princeton professor of the latter topic once stated that by the time he was in his thirties, Johnny had greater expertise in Byzantine history than he did (Blair, 1957). - ...conversing in Ancient Greek at age six... - On his deathbed, he reportedly entertained his brother by reciting the first few lines of each page from Goethe’s Faust, word-for-word, by heart (Blair, 1957).

ksec 7y ago
So he has what's called Photographic Memory ?
- deepaksurti 7y ago
  Not really. From the wikipedia page on eidetic memory [1]: ``` Although the terms eidetic memory and photographic memory are popularly used interchangeably,[1] they are also distinguished, with eidetic memory referring to the ability to view memories like photographs for a few minutes,[3] and photographic memory referring to the ability to recall pages of text or numbers, or similar, in great detail.[4][5] When the concepts are distinguished, eidetic memory is reported to occur in a small number of children and as something generally not found in adults,[2][6] while true photographic memory has never been demonstrated to exist. ``` [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eidetic_memory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eidetic_memory
  - pas 7y ago
    I've always wondered about that, because a few savants like Kim Peek are/were able to recall everything they read. "He could speed through a book in about an hour and remember almost everything he had read, memorizing vast amounts of information in subjects ranging from history and literature, geography and numbers to sports, music and dates. Peek read by scanning the left page with his left eye, then the right page with his right eye. According to an article in The Times newspaper, he could accurately recall the contents of at least 12,000 books."

mikorym 7y ago

In an answer to the question of why there is no evidence of intelligent life beyond earth despite the high probability of it existing, Szilárd responded: "They are already here among us – they just call themselves Hungarians." [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Martians_(scientists) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Martians_(scientists)

bloopernova 7y ago
I went to Budapest on a day trip (hooray for Easyjet) back in the early 2000s, and can attest to this. I definitely felt like I was a stranger in a strange land.
Scaevolus 7y ago
For a depressing analysis on where all the Hungarian geniuses came from and why they vanished: https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/05/26/the-atomic-bomb-considered-as-hungarian-high-school-science-fair-project/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/05/26/the-atomic-bomb-consid...
- mirekrusin 7y ago
  He mentions Curie as non-Ashkenazi, but even with her I don't know, she was born Polish with full name "Maria Salomea Skłodowska"(-Curie), her middle name "Salomea", given after her grandmother sounds to me like Jewish origin. I wonder how percentage of Nobel price winners/etc. would look like if you'd really dig deeper few generations or did genetic tests.
  - mikeyouse 7y ago
    Marie's grandchildren are still alive and could presumably be genetically tested to see their heritage if there was any real question. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H%C3%A9l%C3%A8ne_Langevin-Joliot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H%C3%A9l%C3%A8ne_Langevin-Joli...
  - codingslave 7y ago
    I have a hypothesis that almost all of the greatest intellectual achievements come from a very small number of bloodlines. I really doubt the idea that people are born and some just end up as the smartest in generations, I think theres more to the story

yannis7 7y ago

von Neumann, Oppenheimer, Bohr, Einstein, Rutherford, Turing, Teller, Szilard, Wigner, Meitner... the list goes on... -- how did that time produce so many people of colossal intellect? War certainly can't be the primary factor, given that many of them were brilliant/productive even before WWI

0-_-0 7y ago
4 on your list are Hungarian, and 3 of them went to the same high school: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fasori_Gimn%C3%A1zium https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fasori_Gimn%C3%A1zium Hungary had a great education system at the time.
- qnsi 7y ago
  Or great genes
  - jjgreen 7y ago
    Or there's some kind of magical properties of paprika that the rest of the world hasn't yet noticed ...
- chx 7y ago
  > Hungary had a great education system at the time. I seriously doubt you could back this. You are generalizing from a single school. Might as well argue that socialist Hungary had a great education system because of Fazekas. Neither are true. I happen to have a maths teacher degree from a Hungarian university and we studied Hungarian education history and I learned much more about education systems later on my own (and this is not to say this university maths teacher course was a good one, quite the opposite). If you want to know what great education at the time looked like, read up on Summerhill -- it was founded in 1921 but humanistic education has been around for centuries.
  - nabla9 7y ago
    Mathematics culture and mathematical pedagogy in Hungary has legendary reputation. I don't know how their system works now,but at least up to 80s or 90s it was seen as being the highest level. It emphasized creativity, communication and problem solving. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-28582-5_5 https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-28582-5_...

dr_dshiv 7y ago

Von Neumann invented a novel paradigm for computing using harmonic integration of analog oscillations. The patent was granted after his death. While there were a few prototypes in the 50s, the transistor killed it. A fully functional version of this computational architecture has never been built, to my knowledge: https://patents.google.com/patent/US2815488A/en https://patents.google.com/patent/US2815488A/en

DSingularity 7y ago
What advantages would this have?
- dr_dshiv 7y ago
  Consciousness, primarily. Ha! No, but the computer would resemble brain oscillations and harmonic integration much more than linear clock cycles. We still don't know much about how the brain uses rhythms and harmonies to compute, but it does (brainwave bands are octaves, I.e. harmonic doublings, 2.5,5,10,20,40hz)
  - TaupeRanger 7y ago
    Any further resources on this phenomenon? Seems very interesting as an area of theoretical exploration.
adamnemecek 7y ago
Do you have any more info on this?
- timmaxw 7y ago
  See my comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21551082 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21551082
timmaxw 7y ago
For anyone who's interested in more detail: This type of computer is also called a "parametron" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parametron https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parametron). A Japanese researcher named Eiichi Goto independently invented it around the same time as von Neumann, and developed it much further than von Neumann did, so the idea is more often associated with Goto than with von Neumann. The basic idea is that if a nonlinear harmonic oscillator is driven at twice its resonant frequency, it will oscillate stably in either of two phases. The two phases represent "0" and "1". If the driving signal is switched off and on again, the oscillator will arbitrarily "pick" a phase to stabilize on. If it's exposed to an input signal from another oscillator as it's turning on, it will always pick the same phase as the input signal. This makes it possible to copy a "0" or "1" from one oscillator to another. If the oscillator is exposed to input signals from several other oscillators, it will pick by "majority vote". Finally, a NOT-gate can be built by inverting the signal polarity. This set of primitives is sufficient to build arbitrary logic gates and flip-flops. Goto's paper has an excellent explanation and more detail: Goto, E. (1959). The Parametron, a Digital Computing Element Which Utilizes Parametric Oscillation. Proceedings of the IRE, 47(8), 1304–1316. doi:10.1109/jrproc.1959.287195 (PDF available at https://sci-hub.tw/10.1109/JRPROC.1959.287195 https://sci-hub.tw/10.1109/JRPROC.1959.287195)

chx 7y ago

> In 1945, von Neumann proposed a description for a computer architecture now known as the von Neumann architecture, Do note that he proposed a description but it wasn't his idea. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Draft_of_a_Report_on_the_EDVAC#Controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Draft_of_a_Report_on_the... > some on the EDVAC design team contended that the stored-program concept had evolved out of meetings at the University of Pennsylvania's Moore School of Electrical Engineering predating von Neumann's activity as a consultant there, and that much of the work represented in the First Draft was no more than a translation of the discussed concepts into the language of formal logic in which von Neumann was fluent.

dmazin 7y ago
Yes! It’s a pretty big controversy so far as computing goes and a very interesting read. ENIAC (ISBN 978-0802713483) is a good account that includes it. I have to wonder what else gets washed away in all the myth-making about these guys.
dr_dshiv 7y ago
He also posthumously patented a "non-von Neumann" architecture that has never been built, to my knowledge. I'm surprised that all the attention on quantum computing hasn't revived the idea. https://patents.google.com/patent/US2815488A/en https://patents.google.com/patent/US2815488A/en
- cr0sh 7y ago
  Many of the examples proposed sound similar to other devices and things used in - for example - flash memory, DRAM, and other similar technologies. Based on what I could see from the patent, it looks like an exploration of using such elements in place of (then) vacuum tubes; it also seems like it might also use non-linear properties; somewhat of an "analog computer" in a way. There also seem to be hints at these elements being used in an "artificial neuron" manner (hardware-based artificial neural networks and neurons were a topic of interest at the time). Strangely (I may have missed it - I only skimmed the patent) the use of the transistor seems to be missing (again, not sure)...but if this is true, it may be because again - it seems to be exploring non-linear storage and response as memory and computational elements. The ideas of using - say - capacitive and inductive elements for memory elements (at a minimum) was known back then; it was also known how to use inductive-only elements for amplification and switching purposes (google "magnetic amplifiers" - the tech goes back a long way). But this patent seems to be using both in a different manner for a combination computation and memory (again, similar to an artificial neuron). It's a very interesting patent; in a similar scope as to Turing's writings on neural network systems. Thank you for bringing it to our attention.

signa11 7y ago

i always find it quite strange that for some reason, norbert weiner, is generally excluded from such paeans...

dr_dshiv 7y ago
I think he will be popular in the future as cybernetic theory provides much a much more reliable design viewpoint than "artificial intelligence"
eigenvalue 7y ago
I think some of it has to do with his famously difficult personality. Colleagues found him unbearably arrogant, and he seemed to have a chip on his shoulder, probably arising from his highly contentious relationship with his father. Von Neumann on the other hand was reportedly extremely charming and funny, and great fun to have at parties.
jonjacky 7y ago
See the dual biography of von Neumann and Wiener that I linked above.

lqet 7y ago

"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." - Edward Teller See [0] for a demonstration. I watched a documentary from the 80ies a long time ago. A mathematician (can't remember his name) who worked with von Neumann in Los Alamanos was interviewed. He described von Neumann's last weeks in the hospital - the cancer had already metastasized into his brain. The mathematician said something along this lines (I am citing from memory): "von Neumann was constantly visited by colleagues, who wanted to discuss their latest work with him. He tried to keep up, struggling, like in old times. But he couldn't. Try to imagine having one of the greatest minds maybe in the history of mankind. And then try to imagine losing this gift. I was terrible. I have never seen a man experience greater suffering." Marina von Neumann (his daughter) later wrote this about his final weeks: "After only a few minutes, my father made what seemed to be a very peculiar and frightening request from a man who was widely regarded as one of the greatest - if not the greatest - mathematician of the 20th century. He wanted me to give him two numbers, like 7 and 6 or 10 and 3, and ask him to tell me their sum. For as long as I can remember, I had always known that my father's major source of self-regard, what he felt to be the very essence of his being, was his incredible mental capacity. In this late stage of his illness, he must have been aware that this capacity was deteriorating rapidly, and the panic that caused was worse than any physical pain. In demanding that I test him on these elementary sums, he was seeking reassurance that at least a small fragment of this intellectual powers remained." [1] [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLbllFHBQM4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLbllFHBQM4 [1] https://www.amazon.com/Martians-Daughter-Memoir-Marina-Whitman/dp/0472118420 https://www.amazon.com/Martians-Daughter-Memoir-Marina-Whitm...

mvf0 7y ago
Here is that exact documentary you were thinking of [0]. It's really a fantastic documentary on the incredible feats of von Neumann and worth a watch by everyone here. That person you quoted was Edward Teller and the interview can be found at 54:58 [1]. I read somewhere that the young boy asking von Neumann a question at 6:13 [2] is actually Bill Clinton. Can anyone verify this? [0] https://youtu.be/Y2jiQXI6nrE https://youtu.be/Y2jiQXI6nrE [1] https://youtu.be/Y2jiQXI6nrE?t=3299 https://youtu.be/Y2jiQXI6nrE?t=3299 [2] https://youtu.be/Y2jiQXI6nrE?t=371 https://youtu.be/Y2jiQXI6nrE?t=371

hagap 7y ago

Love it!

calhoun137 7y ago

I am so happy to see this article about Von Neumann on HN!!! I have been posting about him on here for years, and have read all his books, but not as many of his papers as I would like, they are really hard! I have been working for many years now on continuing his theories of weather control technology and self-replicating machines. He is my absolute personal hero and the scientist who, far above all others, I consider to be the one in whose footsteps I want to follow.

kragen 7y ago
That's interesting! Have you made progress on self-replication? I think it's a very important problem. I've made some notes categorized under topics/self-replication.html in http://canonical.org/~kragen/dercuano-20191110.tar.gz http://canonical.org/~kragen/dercuano-20191110.tar.gz, but of course I'm no Johnny von Neumann.
- calhoun137 7y ago
  Von Nueman is on the record as saying he believed computers were a sub field of self replicating machines. I believe they will be very important in the future and will have many applications. Not really, unfortunately. I think it would be fun to build a 3d printer that can replicate itself, but have not tried building any prototypes because besides being too expensive I also havent taken my research into that far enough. I am a very ambitious person and have big plans for the future! What I have done on this subject besides reading about it is very theoretical and abstract, its more of an aspiration right now than an active research project to be completely honest.
  - kragen 7y ago
    I'm interested to hear what you think; my notes talk a lot about how to make things less expensive.
  - wes-k 7y ago
    You may want to check out https://reprap.org/wiki/RepRap https://reprap.org/wiki/RepRap which is exactly this type of 3D printer. I don’t think it’s 100% though.

hyperpallium 7y ago

> Young man, in mathematics you don't understand things. You just get used to them.

billfruit 7y ago

Was his work in quantum mechanics Nobel-worthy? If so he'd be on the list of greats not to receive the prize.

okareaman 7y ago

I think moderators should mark articles behind paywalls as such, I already don't click on wapo or nytimes links but you never can tell with medium. I'm retired on a fixed income and I can't justify in my budget subscribing to these places. It makes me sad when I can't read an article that might otherwise fascinate me. One solution would be to never click on medium links, but then I'd miss the ones that are free.

quomopete 7y ago
Medium really botched the paywall approach and I couldn't possibly agree with you more. It is so inconsistently applied and quite honestly I can't justify spending 5 dollars a month on a "publisher" whose content is so variable. Some Medium articles are really good, others are baseless clickbait, it's hard to tell until you read the article and already sunk the time and the money.
- okareaman 7y ago
  I'm thinking of writing an extension that would go grab the first page of each link and tell me if they want me to pay. The extension would turn the link red if so. How consistently can I get this right though? I can't just go by domain name because sometimes I have free articles left, on New Yorker for example. I agree with you on Medium. I was more angry until I found out it is up to the individual authors to turn on the paywall for their article so they can get paid. 60 dollars a year for hit or miss medium content is a bit rich. They must think they are in the same league as NYT or WAPO

mikorym 7y ago

> Needless to say, von Neumann‘s main contributions to the atomic bomb would not be as a lieutenant in the reserve of the ordnance department, but rather in the concept and design of the explosive lenses that were needed to compress the plutonium core of the Fat Man weapon that was later dropped on Nagasaki. What are the equations that govern an atomic bomb? I don't want to say that I am asking for a friend... /s I assume that by now the relevant equations would be well known anyway?

eigenvalue 7y ago
The equations they are referring to do not concern the nuclear aspects of an atomic bomb. They describe how to set up the geometry of conventional plastic explosives (different kinds of explosives that burn at different speeds) in just the right configuration so that the propagating shock waves interfere with each other to result in a spherical shock wave that pushes the core of the bomb (the radioactive part) towards a single fixed point at the center. If any of this is off even slightly, the forces will not be in balance and the core materials will shoot out of the weak point, rather than uniformly compress to bring the nuclear material to the critical point where the fission is self-sustaining.

ubertakter 7y ago

Pretty good article. Can't wait to read other, less sensational articles recommended here. One particular error in the article stood out to me: the Trinity test site is in White Sands, New Mexico, not Nevada. This was immediately noticeable because I've been to the Trinity site. Von Neumann probes pop up in sci-fi. One of my favorite uses of them is in the Bobiverse books: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/32109569-we-are-legion?from_search=true&qid=rikQuF7074&rank=1 https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/32109569-we-are-legion?f...

clickok 7y ago

Von Neumann is something of a hero of mine, in part because of how he demonstrates (by example) that you can achieve surpassing insight by patiently applying logic and analysis to whatever problem is at hand. But also because he shows that you didn't have to be narrowly focused in your area of competence, you could pursue other interests and even excel in those, even if they aren't the things that you're known for. He really liked history, particularly European history. There's some examples of this in his letters[0], but my favorite von Neumann story on this topic is how he managed to deduce the answer to a literary magazine's poetry trivia question when queried by his brother. They would both be teenagers at the time, and the magazine was in English, as opposed to their native martian, yet John got the solution at once. Paraphrasing from here[1], although his brother's limited run biography/reminiscences has the story too. The prize contest had the lines They know this well my baron and my men Gascony, England, Normandy, Poitou That I had never follower so low Whom I would leave in prison to my gain I say this not as a reproach to them But prisoner I am John replied immediately: "Richard Coeur de Lion". "Did you know the poem?" "No." "Then how did you identify the poet?" "Very simple" he said. "Gascony, England, Normandy, and Poitou were in one feudal hand only once during the early Plantagenets, and from there it was quite easy to associate with Richard's crusades and European captivity. But of course this is a translation, since quite obviously the early Plantagenets spoke Norman-Midieval French." His brother then goes on to state: I found out much later that the translation was that of Henry Adams, and the Prison Song is only one of Richard's most perfect poems, usually referred to as gems of English literature! --- 0. One to his daughter springs to mind, where he expresses fatherly concern about her getting married during her undergrad-- he's worried that she's too young and this will derail her career. After that's addressed, he then moves on to talking about one of her term papers, and proceeds to suggest an insightful take on-- I believe, I haven't read the letters in a decade-- some medieval French bishop. The juxtaposition of concerned father plus European historian in a man more known for axioms and automata was jarring. 1. "The Legacy of John Von Neumann" from the American Mathematical Society, https://books.google.ca/books?id=XBK-r0gS0YMC&dq https://books.google.ca/books?id=XBK-r0gS0YMC&dq (see pg. 22-23)

csbartus 7y ago

just one thought: everybody reading these words is reading it on a von Neumann architecture computer

undebuggable 7y ago

Interesting anecdote from from the biography of Stanisław Ulam, a close friend of von Neumann. Von Neumann was apparently fascinated by the history of the ancient Greece which he learned by reading Thucydides and Herodotus. Once he was talking with Stan about the Siege of Melos[1] and how violent the human nature can be when driven by pride and ambition set to pursue a certain goal. That were late 30s and catastrophes like Lidice[2] and countless others on the soil which today are Poland and Belarus were soon to happen. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Melos https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Melos [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lidice_massacre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lidice_massacre

sunstone 7y ago

So, kind of like Walter Pitts but born with a silver spoon in his mouth rather than being abandoned to the streets of Chicago.

ironyman 7y ago

I've recently been engrossed by the question of how geniuses and highly intelligent people think. There's bits and pieces of information online. What I'd really like to see, though, is (a) geniuses describe their thought process and (b) a smart person voicing is interior monologue while attacking a problem. 1) Do you know of any information like this? Link? 2) Otherwise: do you think in a way that's different (better) than the average person?

hgytr 7y ago
I heard that Tesla could effectively "run" experiments in his mind, not just visualize them. Another pointer is that some "schools of thought" divide the art of thought into ability to visualize and ability to analyze where the latter has to be built upon the former and only when the former is perfected. My personal belief is that being a genius is about the ability to keep in mind many things at a time without losing details.
- pas 7y ago
  I read this about Edison. Also he read very fast, the librarians though he did not like the books that's why he was returning all of them every next week. Also what usually geniuses can do is process information a lot. Read and write many papers. Eg Terrence Tao. His blog is always going strong, the polymath projects, plus regular teaching, plus his own (other) research. Alexander Grothendieck, wrote books full of brand new ideas about very abstract math. Amazing insights. Ability to work with unfamiliar cutting-edge things while keeping focus, while communicating them to others.
williamDafoe 7y ago
The most brilliant guy I ever knew was a founder of the field of computational geometry. He has probably co-authored 500 papers by now. he was a paper engine and would hold court with 10 or 15 people and they would all figure out how to prove the theorems in a paper. His students said that when solving problems he just never seem to to go in the wrong direction ever at all! At age 29 - already a full professor - he got the NSF Wasserman award - top researcher - all fields of science. His dad was a farmer in Austria. He was the first computer scientist to ever get the Wasserman award. Herbert Edelsbruner.

rmp33 7y ago

A question to mathematicians: what does your mind look like when you prove a theorem? There is a comment here, saying that many hard theorems require one to build a complex branch of math and use it to prove a single statement. So I asked myself: what does it really look like to prove a theorem at such level? I can tell what's going on in a programmer's mind. Software is very much like an imaginary mechanism and software engineers are mechanics. For example, this site is a database connected with a html page, so a programmer literally imagines a big gray building that means the database, another building that means the html page and a pipe that connects them. The database has a few tables: one for user accounts, another for posts like this, another for comments. So a programmer imagines 3 big blocks inside that building that are connected with pipes transferring data. Next to the database there is a controller device that sends and receives messages in the pipe connecting it to the users. This analogy continues to tiny things like classes, methods and variables. The entire HN forum looks like a big multi-dimensional city-like structure with numerous pipes connecting pieces together. Experienced programmers not only organize this city well, but can also predict and eliminate complexity, e.g. they know that if you put that kind of building over there, others will inevitable connect to it tens of pipes and the entire city will be a mess, where you see a pipe and have no idea what it connects to and what will happen if you cut it.

Noumenon72 7y ago
I think you are experiencing "typical mind fallacy". https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/baTWMegR42PAsH9qJ/generalizing-from-one-example-realizing-it/ https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/baTWMegR42PAsH9qJ/generalizi... I imagine there are programmers who build objects by imagining people asking them questions and thinking what the objects would answer, or all kinds of other things. People for whom Spring's Repository/Service/Controller/View are real things with personalities or flavors. I tend to think in a mix of "If I could just tell the computer what to do in English, what would I say?" (function names) and "Whose responsibility is this? Is this really their job?" (classes).
williamDafoe 7y ago
I can say, based on proving new NP-completeness complexity theorems and also optimal algorithms in my CS Theory PhD thesis, it's like a little orgasm light turned on in my brain for about 36h. Not as intense but definitely an extreme glow of elation that I carried around for almost 2d. Nothing like it since ....

fahrixds 7y ago

pfdietz 7y ago

That excerpt from Goedel's letter leaves out the most interesting part: he talks about what is essentially the P=NP problem!

hi41 7y ago

I am curious to know. Why does the Jewish community have a disproportionately large number of extremely intelligent people as evidenced by the number of Nobel laureates and other great intellectuals?

Y14NZZRhRT5 7y ago
Because they have higher than average intelligence, thus having "disproportionately large number of extremely intelligent people". I doubt their distribution is not normal.
stared 7y ago
See "The Atomic Bomb Considered As Hungarian High School Science Fair Project" https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/05/26/the-atomic-bomb-considered-as-hungarian-high-school-science-fair-project/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/05/26/the-atomic-bomb-consid... and "Hungarian Education II: Four Nobel Truths" https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/05/29/four-nobel-truths/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/05/29/four-nobel-truths/ by Scott Alexander.
tim333 7y ago
There is some interesting genetic theorising https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashkenazi_Jewish_intelligence#Proposed_genetic_explanations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashkenazi_Jewish_intelligence#...
RivieraKid 7y ago
I was interested about that too and after some research the likely explanation is that people with an Ashkenazi ancestry have a higher intelligence thanks to genetics.
b0rsuk 7y ago
I heard it's preference for non-physical work (lawyers, doctors, bankers, artists, writers...). Also, an old Polish novel "Lalka" by Bolesław Prus says Jews have an admiration for intellect and charades is one of their favorite family past-times.
williamDafoe 7y ago

tehjoker 7y ago

Was hoping for a parallel computing joke. :(

tim333 7y ago

He was also the originator of the term singularity in the accelerating progress of technology sense. Interesting to see how that one pans out.

williamDafoe 7y ago
Yeah as I understand it that ain't going to happen for a thousand years, minimum ...
- tim333 7y ago
  I'd guess quicker but time will tell.

archeantus 7y ago

It must have been so much harder to be brilliant back then. Now we Just have Google for everything. Imagine what these guys could have accomplished with the computing power/tools of today.

audition 7y ago

von Neumann was very anti-Soviet in his political views, yet he worked with (and was co-inventor on a nuclear bomb patent) with fellow nuclear weapons scientist Klaus Fuchs. Fuchs was a spy who passed von Neumann's classified work on to the Soviets. Despite his evident genius in so many areas, von Neumann apparently failed to discern the motivations of his colleague.

neop1x 7y ago

I have a feeling that modern society doesn't motivate scientistis and mathematicians enough. It's easier and better-paid to do some marketing, big data or game industry job. Tech startups are raising millions to develop remotely controlled lightbulbs or multiplier AR chess games and schools are lowering requirements for students to pass as politicians want to show the increasing number of graduates.

sgillen 7y ago
I think a big part of that is there are too many people inherently interested in doing science. In fact there are already a lot more grads coming out with science degrees than there are jobs, and math is even worse. Although these positions have less pay, the competition is probably more fierce than for the positions you mentioned (although I think game-dev has a similar issue). This is a problem but it's a good one to have, we have a lot of people out their willing to make science their life's work even without these external motivators.

hootbootscoot 7y ago

The title contains a lovely pun.

hootbootscoot 7y ago
"unparalleled" - serial Von Neumann machine, get it? get it? nyuk nyuk

artur_makly 7y ago

“Johnny built, at the Institute for Advanced Study, an experimental elec- tronic calculator, popularly known as the joniac, which eventually became the pilot model for similar machines all over the country. Some of the basic prin- ciples developed in the joniac are used even today in the fastest and most modern calculators. To design the machine, Johnny and his co-workers tried to imitate some of the known operations of the live brain. This is the aspect which led him to study neurology, to seek out men in the fields of neurology and psychiatry, to attend many meetings on these subjects, and, eventu- ally, to give lectures to such groups on the possibilities of copying an extremely simplified model of the living brain for man-made machines. ” From his book - “The Computer and The Brain” https://ia800800.us.archive.org/4/items/TheComputerAndTheBrain/The%20Computer%20and%20The%20Brain_text.pdf https://ia800800.us.archive.org/4/items/TheComputerAndTheBra...

artur_makly 7y ago

Hans Bethe explains in astounding articulate detail how John guided their final Atom Bomb design : https://youtu.be/Y2jiQXI6nrE?t=33m34s https://youtu.be/Y2jiQXI6nrE?t=33m34s