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The Duties of John von Neumann’s Assistant in the 1930s (2020)
- dejj 5y agoThis post seems to be missing the punchline that Von Neumann is alleged to later have hired 4 assistants for those tasks.
- jorgenveisdal 5y agoSource?
- DevilMadeMeDoIT 5y ago"Szeged in 1934" [0] "I heard subsequently that the position that had been offered to me was divided into four pieces" [0] https://www.maa.org/sites/default/files/pdf/upload_library/22/Ford/Lorch219-230.pdf https://www.maa.org/sites/default/files/pdf/upload_library/2...
- wging 5y agoThe OP says: > This essay is based on the article “Szeged in 1934”, which was compiled by Reuben Hersh from two manuscripts of Lorch’s for a proposed book on mathematics in Hungary. Based on it, yes -- to the extent that you should just read the original. I'm not sure if the OP article really counts as plagiarism, but it's not worth reading when the original is right here.
- readthenotes1 5y agoOh the horses of Szegad!
- throwaway81523 5y agoI gave up reading the Cantor's Attic articles that keep getting linked from HN. They are all rehashes of well known stuff from other sources. Yes though, the Lorch article was excellent (I read it some time ago).
- Shoop 5y agoArchived link: https://archive.is/UOENL https://archive.is/UOENL
- 1cvmask 5y agoThis entry seems puzzling that our printers were behind the Germans in that era: As American printers were not yet accustomed with the practice of typesetting mathematical symbols, they needed to be taught.
- Fiahil 5y agoWhat's puzzling, really? Prior to WWII, the USA were hardly a "beacon of knowledge". They were still a young country and most scientific advancements originated from Europe. See also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26840948 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26840948
- zhdc1 5y agoThe article mentions Baltimore in particular, which may have had something to do with it (Johns Hopkins notwithstanding).
- numpad0 5y ago[noun]-er as in [noun]-person, like butler, computer, farmer, etc. The device in front of you is _electronic_ computer as called in the era it had been written in.
- leetrout 5y agoI hate medium and the gateway to content. “Install the app or login with social profile to view on the web”. No thank you.
- amatic 5y agoFor some reason, viewing it on incognito mode simply gives the text without the gateway.
- lukashrb 5y agoJust delete their cookies to work around this. But I agree I don't like medium either the site is very slow and the extra steps necessary to access the content are very annoying.
- KirillPanov 5y agoJust turn off javascript. It's astonishing how much of the web suddenly becomes less broken when you do that...
- dinamic 5y agoI’ve never understood what’s the point of giving a lecture nobody except you can grasp. IMHO, It could be justified only by the novelty of topic discussed, otherwise it’s just a waste of everybody’s time.
- pitspotter 5y agoIn some cases it might be due to the curse of knowledge. You assume because you understand it that the subject must be pretty simple for others.
- telesilla 5y agoPerhaps the requirement of giving a lecture helped him prepare knowledge in a communicable way. For me, when I'm asked to give a panel talk or prepare a presentation, I'm forced suddenly to better communicate that I otherwise might need to, and thus knowledge is stored in a better way.
- hutzlibu 5y agoNot commenting about this specific case, but I know some people just like to feed their ego, by lecturing so "high" no one can understand them, so they reinforce their believe, that they themself are clearly the most intelligent person around.
- laichzeit0 5y agoHowever, in von Neumann’s case it could legitimately be argued that he was the most intelligent person around.
- dandanua 5y agoIt's hard to prove that someone does this on purpose. Some lecturers indeed don't bother to go down to earth. But it's not necessary because of their ego. If a "high" presentation has a meaning and a reason, then it's justifiable. Though some people indeed complicate their lectures for no reason.
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- ttty 5y agoSummary of the article The Duties of John von Neumann's Assistant in the 1930s. A 26 year-old former graduate student of Columbia University, Edgar R. Lorch (1907–1990) has just completed his Ph.D. in mathematics. He is, in his own words, awarded a National Research Council Fellowship for a year of post-doctoral studies. John von Neumann taught at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. John Lorch was offered a position as his assistant at the IAS. Lorch's duties included reciting aloud lines from Lewis Carroll's "The Hunting of the Snark" and reciting German poetry. In the 1930s, von Neumann's assistant was required to keep up with him and his lectures. The assistant was also required to translate his numerous 100-page papers into English. The job required a person to be "sharp, fast, clever and tough," writes author N.A. Vonneuman. "No matter, the Annals of Mathematics editorial assistant retyped the letter, supplying all the missing symbols" "I left my meeting with Veblen in a downcast mood" "The job entailed such onerous duties that only someone with an iron constitution could survive" This essay is based on the article "Szeged in 1934" by Edgar R. Lorch. It is part of a series of stories on math-related topics, published in Cantor's Paradise, a weekly Medium publication.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- mrob 5y agoIs this automatically generated? It looks like GPT-3 output, in that it superficially looks like a real summary, but it doesn't make much sense if you examine it closely. The Annals of Mathematics quote is from an anecdote about Lev Pontryagin, not von Neumann or his assistant.
- KirillPanov 5y ago> it superficially looks like a real... but it doesn't make much sense if you examine it closely. In that case I think GPT-3 has been writing 80% of the comments on the interwebs since 2010 or so.
- luckylion 5y agoIt's automatically generated, but not ML, it's just scraping together other sources, likely from a Google search. If you look at their comment history and just pop some sentences into Google with quotes, you'll find the sources. Depending on when Google picks up HN-threads for more obscure topics, the bot will also copy parts of comments from the very same thread it's commenting on, e.g. here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26841134 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26841134
- jozvolskyef 5y agoThe fact that von Neumann, a polyglot fluent in English, kept writing in German while at Princeton and left translation to his assistants, makes me wonder how much productivity is lost to Europe not having a lingua franca native to all citizens. Personally English isn't my native language. I write English with greater fluency than my native language at this point, but reaching this level took thousands of hours that could have been spent solving problems and building things.
- henvic 5y agoThankfully one language (English, but whatever language it is might not be that relevant) is becoming 'de facto' the language for sciences, and kids are starting to learn it from an earlier age. It's still a long way to go, especially for undeveloped countries. However, probably any children born within the next decade will be able to read and speak at least advanced English before reaching 18.
- dctoedt 5y ago> Thankfully one language (English, but whatever language it is might not be that relevant) is becoming 'de facto' the language for sciences, and kids are starting to learn it from an earlier age. Soapbox UX issue: That's why we language sticklers should tolerate and even welcome the "corruption" of English — that is to say, the crowd-sourced, grass-roots simplification of the tongue. Non-native speakers should feel that it's easy to achieve fluency in English without wondering whether they'll be looked down upon for getting it not quite right. (That will also help English stay competitive with, say, Mandarin.) Here's just one example: It should be perfectly fine to say "less errors," vice the supposedly-correct "fewer errors." More examples?
- bsanr2 5y agoThe one I hate, but that seems to be taking over anyway: the use of "up" rather than "raise."
- 5y ago