13 ms·

A new biography of John von Neumann

203 points by sohkamyung 5y ago

1cvmask 5y ago
The alien rat pack of STEM: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Martians_(scientists) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Martians_(scientists) - My favorite interaction is of von Neumann with Shannon regarding the coining of entropy: What von Neumann Said to Shannon When Shannon first derived his famous formula for information, he asked von Neumann what he should call it and von Neumann replied “You should call it entropy for two reasons: first because that is what the formula is in statistical mechanises but second and more important, as nobody knows what entropy is, whenever you use the term you will always be at an advantage! http://www.spatialcomplexity.info/what-von-neumann-said-to-shannon/ http://www.spatialcomplexity.info/what-von-neumann-said-to-s...
- kqr2 5y ago
  Recent HN discussion on the Martians of Budapest : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28726489 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28726489
- raincom 5y ago
  When one uses an existing word, it carries a lot of epistemic and ontological baggage, thereby causing trouble to those who are new to the domain. That’s why scientists go for a linguistic reform: invent a new word during a conceptual or scientific revolution. That’s how the word “Oxygen” replaced the old “Phlogiston”.
  - n4r9 5y ago
    When defining statistical entropy in his Cambridge lecture course on Coding and Cryptography, Thomas Korner adds the following footnote: "It is unwise for the beginner and may or may not be fruitless for the expert to seek a link with entropy in physics." https://www.dpmms.cam.ac.uk/~twk/Shan.pdf https://www.dpmms.cam.ac.uk/~twk/Shan.pdf
    - sudosysgen 5y ago
      Does Landauer's principle not already create a very strong link between the two? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landauer%27s_principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landauer%27s_principle It even predicts a direct equivalence between the unit of bit and Joules per Kelvin with the entropy produced in the erasure of a bit being equal to 9.6e-24 J/K Unless I'm making some mistake, you can even use computer science principles combined with Landauer's limit to solve Maxwell's Demon.
    - kgwgk 5y ago
      The link was established quite early and it wasn’t fruitless: https://bayes.wustl.edu/etj/articles/theory.1.pdf https://bayes.wustl.edu/etj/articles/theory.1.pdf
  - johncearls 5y ago
    My least favorite example of this is statistical "significance" which gives the impression of importance. I can't think of a word that has caused more trouble in science than that.
jimmyed 5y ago
Ah, the genius of being at the right time among the right people, and having an all-too-helpful assistant...
- rg111 5y ago
  > Von Neumann was a child prodigy. When he was six years old, he could divide two eight-digit numbers in his head and could converse in Ancient Greek. > By the age of eight, von Neumann was familiar with differential and integral calculus > At the age of 15, he began to study advanced calculus under the renowned analyst Gábor Szegő. On their first meeting, Szegő was so astounded with the boy's mathematical talent that he was brought to tears. > By the age of 19, von Neumann had published two major mathematical papers, the second of which gave the modern definition of ordinal numbers, which superseded Georg Cantor's definition. Yeah right. Sure his privilege helped. But a lot of people all through the world had that amount of privilege or more. How many von Neumans are there?
  - sudosysgen 5y ago
    Really? A lot of people all throughout the world have had people outside the school system to teach them integer factorization, Ancient greek, and integral calculus as soon as they could? In the real world 99% of parents don't have the time to teach their child anything beyond how to speak and walk and answer their questions. 90%+ of parent's don't even remember how to efficiently factor integers or any math beyond arithmetic. Certainly very few people have this level of genius, but if Von Neumann were to be born to an average milieu it is impossible he would have been able to reach those milestones.
    - yuy910616 5y ago
      I think this is a question of what your definition of "a lot" is. If you use percentage - for example, 1% of parents, of maybe even less - 0.01%, 0.01%*7.7 billion = about a million people. Does percentage make more sense here or absolute number? It depends on your context. I would say in this argument, it seems more certain that Von Neumann's success, which is always a function of both nature and nurture, can probably be attributed more to nature. Or, perhaps most likely, it's a rare event of talent meets incredible luck.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
Rijek33 5y ago
Sometimes I have the nagging feeling that everyone I idolize would leave me disappointed if I knew them personally. The further back a person is in history the more mythical he becomes
- booleandilemma 5y ago
  It's worse than that. A lot of these historical people that we idolize would probably find us dull and boring. What kind of conversations could we hope to have with someone like von Neumann or Turing?
- ArnoVW 5y ago
  I recently bumped into this Arte documentary about his life. I believe in the first 5 minutes they list his achievements and what he was like as a kid. I don't think you would have been disappointed :-) Documentary (with English subtitles ) https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=RuwnywSpl40 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=RuwnywSpl40 Documentary (in French) https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QQui90ZGobo https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QQui90ZGobo
  - rsiqueira 5y ago
    Thanks. The video description states that "If, one day, an artificial consciousness supplants human intelligence, it will be largely due to him." (Si, un jour, une conscience artificielle supplante l’intelligence humaine, ce sera en grande partie de son fait.). In fact, his last work is an unfinished book "The Computer and the Brain". Now is the best time for us to continue this work.
    - ArnoVW 5y ago
      Oops. Copy pasted the French link. It's corrected now.
- rg111 5y ago
  I used to think this way once. But not any more. Some people might do or were something that I won't like. I have learned to not let that influence me in way, and be comfortably ambivalent. I especially felt bad after I came to know that Richard Feynman slept with many of his friends' wives and tried to sleep with even more of them. He burnt a lot of bridges this way. One Physicist had told me that Feynman hit on his wife twice, and when discouraged by the wife, he let it go as a perfect gentleman. Despite this, Feynman remains one of my most revered icons and his picture still hangs on my wall. I don't overlook what he did or try to find some naive justification. I know he was this way and that does not make his mind less fascinating to me.
gjkood 5y ago
One of the most interesting non-fiction books I have read is Richard Rhodes' "The Making of the Atomic Bomb". It talks about how the majority of the brains behind the Manhattan Project came from one school in Budapest, Hungary called the 'Minta School'. John von Neumann being one of those geniuses. [1] The Making of the Atomic Bomb, Richard Rhodes https://www.amazon.com/Making-of-Atomic-Bomb-audiobook/dp/B01B1ZCG8G/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2Q8EAGB4E1BLF&dchild=1&keywords=richard+rhodes+the+making+of+the+atomic+bomb&qid=1633792816&sprefix=richard+rhodes%2Caps%2C222&sr=8-1 https://www.amazon.com/Making-of-Atomic-Bomb-audiobook/dp/B0...
- melling 5y ago
  Have this book on my shelf waiting to be read. It’s frequently mentioned. The author also has a book about the hydrogen bomb too: https://www.amazon.com/Dark-Sun-Making-Hydrogen-Bomb/dp/0684824140 https://www.amazon.com/Dark-Sun-Making-Hydrogen-Bomb/dp/0684...
- hermitcrab 5y ago
  I heard lots of good things about this book. But I gave up after a few chapters. I just didn't get on with the author's writing style.
  - pribalta 5y ago
    To be completely honest, the beginning is a bit tough. IIRC it focuses mostly on Niels Bohr, his life, and his philosophical approach to quantum physics. Once the book centers itself around Leo Szilard, things start to pick up. Having said this, I agree with the previous comment. The book is amazing. Disclaimer: I listened to it in audiobook format through Audible
    - maroonblazer 5y ago
      I discovered this book several years ago thanks to someone here on HN. I did the audiobook version and found it gripping. Bought the paperback version so I could refer back to favorite parts. Rhodes' personal story is really interesting. CSPAN did a great interview with him many years ago - highly recommended. https://www.c-span.org/video/?155692-1/depth-richard-rhodes https://www.c-span.org/video/?155692-1/depth-richard-rhodes
bumbledraven 5y ago
https://archive.is/iZDKm https://archive.is/iZDKm
est31 5y ago
The release of a new biography explains the recent surge of threads about him: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28726489 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28726489 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28673376 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28673376
photochemsyn 5y ago
John von Neumann was certainly involved in a lot of scientific discoveries, but from the review this looks more like a hagiography with a goal of rehabilitating the reputation of an incredibly gifted scientist/mathematician whose coziness with the military-industrial complex remains controversial to this day. 'John von Neumann, the theorist of mutual assured destruction', is how many still view his record. John von Neumann's record illustrates why brilliant scientists may not be the best architects of foreign policy. In particular, von Neumann's belief in the inevitability of nuclear war led him to call for a first strike against Soviet cities before they could develop a nuclear arsenal. This is a rather difficult political-moral-ethical position to rehabilitate. One also gets the sense that a JvN was a bit stingy with sharing credit on major breakthroughs in computing. Generally I find these 'heroic genius' books about scientific personalities to get stale over time, while books that focus on the discoveries themselves and the many people who contributed are far more interesting and historically accurate. Richard Rhodes's excellent work on the American and Soviet nuclear weapons programs is an example of the latter approach.
- sillysaurusx 5y ago
  > whose coziness with the military-industrial complex remains controversial to this day. Why is it controversial? I know nothing of Von Neumann, but it doesn't seem like a bad thing. "Coziness" could mean a lot of things, but personally even if Von Neumann was taking the military industrial complex out on a date every Tuesday, I wouldn't see a problem with it. Is the implication that the military was influencing his integrity as a scientist? The bigger criticism of Von Neumann is that he set back quantum mechanics for a few decades: https://twitter.com/orzelc/status/1446414513465696256 https://twitter.com/orzelc/status/1446414513465696256 EDIT: There's a shocking comment further downthread. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28811713 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28811713 I retract my claim that the bigger criticism was his treatment of QM. The bigger criticism is that Von Neumann was a lunatic – I try not to call names, but advocating the extermination of a population is the dealbreaker threshold of niceness for me.
  - sudosysgen 5y ago
    Do you think that enthusiastically egging on the nuclear holocaust of tens of million of people for ultimately no good reason (and that's the best case scenario of his proposal, it could have been even worse as he seriously underestimated the Soviet Union) is not a bad thing? Had he managed to convince the president, he would have been one of the people with the worst impact on humanity (and science incidentally) of all history, perhaps even dooming us all.
jcmontx 5y ago
IMO Mr von Neumann was the most brilliant person of the 20th century
thinkingemote 5y ago
Coincidentally today is the saint day of the famous British theologian John Henry Newman who died in 1890. https://angelusnews.com/faith/saint-of-the-day/john-henry-newman/ https://angelusnews.com/faith/saint-of-the-day/john-henry-ne...
rrwright 5y ago
So far, “Turing’s Cathedral” by George Dyson is the best von Neumann biography I’ve found—though it’s not explicitly a biography of him, but of the development of the computer (and the Princeton IAS). It includes lots of other characters who played their parts, but von Neumann is clearly at the center.
throwaway81523 5y ago
The earlier book-length biography by Norman Macrae is quite terrible imho. This new one (per photochemyn's comment in this thread) doesn't sound that promising either, unfortunately, and few of von Neumann's contemporaries are still around to talk to. There is a German guy (Ulf Hashagen) who has done some excellent biographical research about von Neumann. I hope he writes a full length biography some day, since there doesn't seem to be one now. Meanwhile, the best overview article I know of is Stanislaw Ulam's profile in the AMS Bulletin published shortly after von Neumann's death, in the special issue devoted to him: https://projecteuclid.org/journals/bulletin-of-the-american-mathematical-society/volume-64/issue-3.P2 https://projecteuclid.org/journals/bulletin-of-the-american-...
wayeq 5y ago
“For progress,” he wrote, “there is no cure.” that pretty much sums things up, doesn't it.
mjreacher 5y ago
Hi, I'd like to make a few comments on von Neumann considering I've spent some time reading around about him. First of all, on the biography. So far for me the biographies written about von Neumann have two key problems to me: 1) They avoid his mathematical work and focus on his work in game theory, computing, nuclear weapons, etc. I find this a bit problematic because despite all his other achievements, von Neumann was fundamentally a mathematician who applied his skills in mathematics and logic to other fields to great success, however before all this he first made many substantial contributions to pure mathematics. Now the question is how can one author cover these broad areas that von Neumann contributed to at a reasonable level? I'm not really sure it can be done, even von Neumann's colleagues themselves weren't fully aware of the extent of his work. For example I remember reading some interview of one where they said he never made any contributions to number theory, yet von Neumann early in his career did publish at least two papers on the field, one on algebraic number theory and another on transcendental number theory. So perhaps multiple authors, each covering their specialty would work better if they can make their chapters weave together nicely. Another problem is what level should it be. I personally would like it to be around STEM major level mathematics so you can properly introduce some concepts however I understand most authors wouldn't do this because it decreases their possible audience. 2) Not much research is done into what technical work he did in defence and for private companies (particularly IBM). From the biographies I've read they all happily cover how von Neumann was this greatly respected figure and how he lead this committee and that committee and how on his deathbed he had the chiefs of all the armed forces and the chiefs of staff there too but that isn't really covering the actual technical work he did there (a good reference for his government consultancies is `A Fiery Peace in a Cold War`). He obviously consulted widely in the military, CIA, NSA, etc, military establishment in general but in terms of technical work not much is there, presumably because all the records are hidden or classified. I can understand why some of his work even today might remain that way (particularly his work on nuclear weapons) but I've yet to have seen anyone try send a FOI request to various agencies and see what they can fish out given that he died over 60 years ago. He did spend a lot of time on these things post WW2 so it would be interesting to see what he did actually contribute to beyond his position on committees and advocacy. I notice several other comments on this page I think I can make a educated comment on as well. First about his views on communism. As a child in Hungary von Neumann lived through several revolutions, one communist and another antisemitic. He was at risk of attack from both groups, from the communists for being part of a wealthy family and from antisemites and far righters for being a Jew. Safe to say I can imagine this ordeal while he was a teenager didn't leave a good taste in his mouth, especially as he had to move around the country to avoid being attacked and potentially killed. His remark about bombing them at a certain o'clock was from 1950, just as communism was being spread quite forcefully through violence around Europe and you can imagine why he wanted to prevent this from happening, especially considering the USA would probably lose a conventional war at this time, however they still did maintain a monopoly on nuclear weapons (for a short period). I would also like to note that for whatever reason he seemed to believe nuclear war was inevitable, and made an admission on his death bed that he believed nuclear war was "absolutely certain" to occur in the future and that everyone would die from it. This might help explain his comments if he sincerely believed nuclear war was inevitable anyway (luckily it wasn't). I would also note that he visited Moscow for a conference in 1935 and I'm sure he had many friends there, so views that he wanted to exterminate civilians for the sake of it or whatever would also be clearly wrong. Second on the Kyoto scenario. Despite wikipedia claiming so, scanning Macrae's biography shows no indication that von Neumann had Kyoto as his first choice, but rather one of 4 cities he voted for. From what I understand the targeting of Kyoto was first added for technical reasons, and did in fact have strategic value, however the targeting committee did also note that perhaps a city full of intellectuals would more likely appreciate the significance of the bomb and hence advocate for a more peaceful solution (http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2014/08/08/kyoto-misconception/ http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2014/08/08/kyoto-misconceptio...). Third on the good upbringing argument. A good way to see how special von Neumann was compared to other mathematicians and scientists is to get their opinions themselves, unfortunately most are long dead however several history projects do include information on this. This [1] is a good example. Basically everyone who mentions von Neumann notes that his speed and rapidity is bar absolutely none, however one of them (Edward McShane) does quote fellow Princeton mathematician Solomon Lefschetz in saying that they paid too much respect to von Neumann because of his upbringing and in particular he had the finest tutoring by Hungarian mathematicians as a child. However a counterexample to this is simple. If it was just that, then why has no one like von Neumann come up in the past 100+ years? Especially considering how material conditions and access to information have only improved since the early 1900s when von Neumann grew up. [1]: https://web.archive.org/web/20011126182532/http://infoshare1.princeton.edu:2003/libraries/firestone/rbsc/finding_aids/mathoral/pm02.htm https://web.archive.org/web/20011126182532/http://infoshare1... Overall I think von Neumann is someone particularly unique. Not because of his creativity, nor because of insight, sure he may have had these qualities but so did many other people. What is unique about him is his speed. Looking at some of these interviews on several occasions it seems that von Neumann was literally making up new proofs for some theorem on the spot. Whether he thought about them beforehand or whether he did truly make them up on the spot is of course in question, but it seems he did it often enough one might could not be blamed for believing that the latter version is what he really did. I would also note a strange fascination that HN seems to have with von Neumann, as I see him here quite regularly and I can understand for some the worship is excessive, so it is important to note even someone of his caliber can make mistakes, the most important one I believe is already mentioned in this thread which is the mathematicization of the measurement problem. Everyone can make mistakes, and absolutely no one is immune from this.

203 points by sohkamyung 5y ago

The alien rat pack of STEM: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Martians_(scientists) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Martians_(scientists) - My favorite interaction is of von Neumann with Shannon regarding the coining of entropy: What von Neumann Said to Shannon When Shannon first derived his famous formula for information, he asked von Neumann what he should call it and von Neumann replied “You should call it entropy for two reasons: first because that is what the formula is in statistical mechanises but second and more important, as nobody knows what entropy is, whenever you use the term you will always be at an advantage! http://www.spatialcomplexity.info/what-von-neumann-said-to-shannon/ http://www.spatialcomplexity.info/what-von-neumann-said-to-s...

kqr2 5y ago
Recent HN discussion on the Martians of Budapest : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28726489 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28726489
raincom 5y ago
When one uses an existing word, it carries a lot of epistemic and ontological baggage, thereby causing trouble to those who are new to the domain. That’s why scientists go for a linguistic reform: invent a new word during a conceptual or scientific revolution. That’s how the word “Oxygen” replaced the old “Phlogiston”.
- n4r9 5y ago
  When defining statistical entropy in his Cambridge lecture course on Coding and Cryptography, Thomas Korner adds the following footnote: "It is unwise for the beginner and may or may not be fruitless for the expert to seek a link with entropy in physics." https://www.dpmms.cam.ac.uk/~twk/Shan.pdf https://www.dpmms.cam.ac.uk/~twk/Shan.pdf
  - sudosysgen 5y ago
    Does Landauer's principle not already create a very strong link between the two? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landauer%27s_principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landauer%27s_principle It even predicts a direct equivalence between the unit of bit and Joules per Kelvin with the entropy produced in the erasure of a bit being equal to 9.6e-24 J/K Unless I'm making some mistake, you can even use computer science principles combined with Landauer's limit to solve Maxwell's Demon.
  - kgwgk 5y ago
    The link was established quite early and it wasn’t fruitless: https://bayes.wustl.edu/etj/articles/theory.1.pdf https://bayes.wustl.edu/etj/articles/theory.1.pdf
- johncearls 5y ago
  My least favorite example of this is statistical "significance" which gives the impression of importance. I can't think of a word that has caused more trouble in science than that.

jimmyed 5y ago

Ah, the genius of being at the right time among the right people, and having an all-too-helpful assistant...

rg111 5y ago
> Von Neumann was a child prodigy. When he was six years old, he could divide two eight-digit numbers in his head and could converse in Ancient Greek. > By the age of eight, von Neumann was familiar with differential and integral calculus > At the age of 15, he began to study advanced calculus under the renowned analyst Gábor Szegő. On their first meeting, Szegő was so astounded with the boy's mathematical talent that he was brought to tears. > By the age of 19, von Neumann had published two major mathematical papers, the second of which gave the modern definition of ordinal numbers, which superseded Georg Cantor's definition. Yeah right. Sure his privilege helped. But a lot of people all through the world had that amount of privilege or more. How many von Neumans are there?
- sudosysgen 5y ago
  Really? A lot of people all throughout the world have had people outside the school system to teach them integer factorization, Ancient greek, and integral calculus as soon as they could? In the real world 99% of parents don't have the time to teach their child anything beyond how to speak and walk and answer their questions. 90%+ of parent's don't even remember how to efficiently factor integers or any math beyond arithmetic. Certainly very few people have this level of genius, but if Von Neumann were to be born to an average milieu it is impossible he would have been able to reach those milestones.
  - yuy910616 5y ago
    I think this is a question of what your definition of "a lot" is. If you use percentage - for example, 1% of parents, of maybe even less - 0.01%, 0.01%*7.7 billion = about a million people. Does percentage make more sense here or absolute number? It depends on your context. I would say in this argument, it seems more certain that Von Neumann's success, which is always a function of both nature and nurture, can probably be attributed more to nature. Or, perhaps most likely, it's a rare event of talent meets incredible luck.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

Rijek33 5y ago

Sometimes I have the nagging feeling that everyone I idolize would leave me disappointed if I knew them personally. The further back a person is in history the more mythical he becomes

booleandilemma 5y ago
It's worse than that. A lot of these historical people that we idolize would probably find us dull and boring. What kind of conversations could we hope to have with someone like von Neumann or Turing?
ArnoVW 5y ago
I recently bumped into this Arte documentary about his life. I believe in the first 5 minutes they list his achievements and what he was like as a kid. I don't think you would have been disappointed :-) Documentary (with English subtitles ) https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=RuwnywSpl40 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=RuwnywSpl40 Documentary (in French) https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QQui90ZGobo https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QQui90ZGobo
- rsiqueira 5y ago
  Thanks. The video description states that "If, one day, an artificial consciousness supplants human intelligence, it will be largely due to him." (Si, un jour, une conscience artificielle supplante l’intelligence humaine, ce sera en grande partie de son fait.). In fact, his last work is an unfinished book "The Computer and the Brain". Now is the best time for us to continue this work.
  - ArnoVW 5y ago
    Oops. Copy pasted the French link. It's corrected now.
rg111 5y ago
I used to think this way once. But not any more. Some people might do or were something that I won't like. I have learned to not let that influence me in way, and be comfortably ambivalent. I especially felt bad after I came to know that Richard Feynman slept with many of his friends' wives and tried to sleep with even more of them. He burnt a lot of bridges this way. One Physicist had told me that Feynman hit on his wife twice, and when discouraged by the wife, he let it go as a perfect gentleman. Despite this, Feynman remains one of my most revered icons and his picture still hangs on my wall. I don't overlook what he did or try to find some naive justification. I know he was this way and that does not make his mind less fascinating to me.

gjkood 5y ago

One of the most interesting non-fiction books I have read is Richard Rhodes' "The Making of the Atomic Bomb". It talks about how the majority of the brains behind the Manhattan Project came from one school in Budapest, Hungary called the 'Minta School'. John von Neumann being one of those geniuses. [1] The Making of the Atomic Bomb, Richard Rhodes https://www.amazon.com/Making-of-Atomic-Bomb-audiobook/dp/B01B1ZCG8G/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2Q8EAGB4E1BLF&dchild=1&keywords=richard+rhodes+the+making+of+the+atomic+bomb&qid=1633792816&sprefix=richard+rhodes%2Caps%2C222&sr=8-1 https://www.amazon.com/Making-of-Atomic-Bomb-audiobook/dp/B0...

melling 5y ago
Have this book on my shelf waiting to be read. It’s frequently mentioned. The author also has a book about the hydrogen bomb too: https://www.amazon.com/Dark-Sun-Making-Hydrogen-Bomb/dp/0684824140 https://www.amazon.com/Dark-Sun-Making-Hydrogen-Bomb/dp/0684...
hermitcrab 5y ago
I heard lots of good things about this book. But I gave up after a few chapters. I just didn't get on with the author's writing style.
- pribalta 5y ago
  To be completely honest, the beginning is a bit tough. IIRC it focuses mostly on Niels Bohr, his life, and his philosophical approach to quantum physics. Once the book centers itself around Leo Szilard, things start to pick up. Having said this, I agree with the previous comment. The book is amazing. Disclaimer: I listened to it in audiobook format through Audible
  - maroonblazer 5y ago
    I discovered this book several years ago thanks to someone here on HN. I did the audiobook version and found it gripping. Bought the paperback version so I could refer back to favorite parts. Rhodes' personal story is really interesting. CSPAN did a great interview with him many years ago - highly recommended. https://www.c-span.org/video/?155692-1/depth-richard-rhodes https://www.c-span.org/video/?155692-1/depth-richard-rhodes

bumbledraven 5y ago

https://archive.is/iZDKm https://archive.is/iZDKm

est31 5y ago

The release of a new biography explains the recent surge of threads about him: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28726489 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28726489 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28673376 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28673376

photochemsyn 5y ago

John von Neumann was certainly involved in a lot of scientific discoveries, but from the review this looks more like a hagiography with a goal of rehabilitating the reputation of an incredibly gifted scientist/mathematician whose coziness with the military-industrial complex remains controversial to this day. 'John von Neumann, the theorist of mutual assured destruction', is how many still view his record. John von Neumann's record illustrates why brilliant scientists may not be the best architects of foreign policy. In particular, von Neumann's belief in the inevitability of nuclear war led him to call for a first strike against Soviet cities before they could develop a nuclear arsenal. This is a rather difficult political-moral-ethical position to rehabilitate. One also gets the sense that a JvN was a bit stingy with sharing credit on major breakthroughs in computing. Generally I find these 'heroic genius' books about scientific personalities to get stale over time, while books that focus on the discoveries themselves and the many people who contributed are far more interesting and historically accurate. Richard Rhodes's excellent work on the American and Soviet nuclear weapons programs is an example of the latter approach.

sillysaurusx 5y ago
> whose coziness with the military-industrial complex remains controversial to this day. Why is it controversial? I know nothing of Von Neumann, but it doesn't seem like a bad thing. "Coziness" could mean a lot of things, but personally even if Von Neumann was taking the military industrial complex out on a date every Tuesday, I wouldn't see a problem with it. Is the implication that the military was influencing his integrity as a scientist? The bigger criticism of Von Neumann is that he set back quantum mechanics for a few decades: https://twitter.com/orzelc/status/1446414513465696256 https://twitter.com/orzelc/status/1446414513465696256 EDIT: There's a shocking comment further downthread. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28811713 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28811713 I retract my claim that the bigger criticism was his treatment of QM. The bigger criticism is that Von Neumann was a lunatic – I try not to call names, but advocating the extermination of a population is the dealbreaker threshold of niceness for me.
- sudosysgen 5y ago
  Do you think that enthusiastically egging on the nuclear holocaust of tens of million of people for ultimately no good reason (and that's the best case scenario of his proposal, it could have been even worse as he seriously underestimated the Soviet Union) is not a bad thing? Had he managed to convince the president, he would have been one of the people with the worst impact on humanity (and science incidentally) of all history, perhaps even dooming us all.

jcmontx 5y ago

IMO Mr von Neumann was the most brilliant person of the 20th century

thinkingemote 5y ago

Coincidentally today is the saint day of the famous British theologian John Henry Newman who died in 1890. https://angelusnews.com/faith/saint-of-the-day/john-henry-newman/ https://angelusnews.com/faith/saint-of-the-day/john-henry-ne...

rrwright 5y ago

So far, “Turing’s Cathedral” by George Dyson is the best von Neumann biography I’ve found—though it’s not explicitly a biography of him, but of the development of the computer (and the Princeton IAS). It includes lots of other characters who played their parts, but von Neumann is clearly at the center.

throwaway81523 5y ago

The earlier book-length biography by Norman Macrae is quite terrible imho. This new one (per photochemyn's comment in this thread) doesn't sound that promising either, unfortunately, and few of von Neumann's contemporaries are still around to talk to. There is a German guy (Ulf Hashagen) who has done some excellent biographical research about von Neumann. I hope he writes a full length biography some day, since there doesn't seem to be one now. Meanwhile, the best overview article I know of is Stanislaw Ulam's profile in the AMS Bulletin published shortly after von Neumann's death, in the special issue devoted to him: https://projecteuclid.org/journals/bulletin-of-the-american-mathematical-society/volume-64/issue-3.P2 https://projecteuclid.org/journals/bulletin-of-the-american-...

wayeq 5y ago

“For progress,” he wrote, “there is no cure.” that pretty much sums things up, doesn't it.

mjreacher 5y ago

Hi, I'd like to make a few comments on von Neumann considering I've spent some time reading around about him. First of all, on the biography. So far for me the biographies written about von Neumann have two key problems to me: 1) They avoid his mathematical work and focus on his work in game theory, computing, nuclear weapons, etc. I find this a bit problematic because despite all his other achievements, von Neumann was fundamentally a mathematician who applied his skills in mathematics and logic to other fields to great success, however before all this he first made many substantial contributions to pure mathematics. Now the question is how can one author cover these broad areas that von Neumann contributed to at a reasonable level? I'm not really sure it can be done, even von Neumann's colleagues themselves weren't fully aware of the extent of his work. For example I remember reading some interview of one where they said he never made any contributions to number theory, yet von Neumann early in his career did publish at least two papers on the field, one on algebraic number theory and another on transcendental number theory. So perhaps multiple authors, each covering their specialty would work better if they can make their chapters weave together nicely. Another problem is what level should it be. I personally would like it to be around STEM major level mathematics so you can properly introduce some concepts however I understand most authors wouldn't do this because it decreases their possible audience. 2) Not much research is done into what technical work he did in defence and for private companies (particularly IBM). From the biographies I've read they all happily cover how von Neumann was this greatly respected figure and how he lead this committee and that committee and how on his deathbed he had the chiefs of all the armed forces and the chiefs of staff there too but that isn't really covering the actual technical work he did there (a good reference for his government consultancies is `A Fiery Peace in a Cold War`). He obviously consulted widely in the military, CIA, NSA, etc, military establishment in general but in terms of technical work not much is there, presumably because all the records are hidden or classified. I can understand why some of his work even today might remain that way (particularly his work on nuclear weapons) but I've yet to have seen anyone try send a FOI request to various agencies and see what they can fish out given that he died over 60 years ago. He did spend a lot of time on these things post WW2 so it would be interesting to see what he did actually contribute to beyond his position on committees and advocacy. I notice several other comments on this page I think I can make a educated comment on as well. First about his views on communism. As a child in Hungary von Neumann lived through several revolutions, one communist and another antisemitic. He was at risk of attack from both groups, from the communists for being part of a wealthy family and from antisemites and far righters for being a Jew. Safe to say I can imagine this ordeal while he was a teenager didn't leave a good taste in his mouth, especially as he had to move around the country to avoid being attacked and potentially killed. His remark about bombing them at a certain o'clock was from 1950, just as communism was being spread quite forcefully through violence around Europe and you can imagine why he wanted to prevent this from happening, especially considering the USA would probably lose a conventional war at this time, however they still did maintain a monopoly on nuclear weapons (for a short period). I would also like to note that for whatever reason he seemed to believe nuclear war was inevitable, and made an admission on his death bed that he believed nuclear war was "absolutely certain" to occur in the future and that everyone would die from it. This might help explain his comments if he sincerely believed nuclear war was inevitable anyway (luckily it wasn't). I would also note that he visited Moscow for a conference in 1935 and I'm sure he had many friends there, so views that he wanted to exterminate civilians for the sake of it or whatever would also be clearly wrong. Second on the Kyoto scenario. Despite wikipedia claiming so, scanning Macrae's biography shows no indication that von Neumann had Kyoto as his first choice, but rather one of 4 cities he voted for. From what I understand the targeting of Kyoto was first added for technical reasons, and did in fact have strategic value, however the targeting committee did also note that perhaps a city full of intellectuals would more likely appreciate the significance of the bomb and hence advocate for a more peaceful solution (http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2014/08/08/kyoto-misconception/ http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2014/08/08/kyoto-misconceptio...). Third on the good upbringing argument. A good way to see how special von Neumann was compared to other mathematicians and scientists is to get their opinions themselves, unfortunately most are long dead however several history projects do include information on this. This [1] is a good example. Basically everyone who mentions von Neumann notes that his speed and rapidity is bar absolutely none, however one of them (Edward McShane) does quote fellow Princeton mathematician Solomon Lefschetz in saying that they paid too much respect to von Neumann because of his upbringing and in particular he had the finest tutoring by Hungarian mathematicians as a child. However a counterexample to this is simple. If it was just that, then why has no one like von Neumann come up in the past 100+ years? Especially considering how material conditions and access to information have only improved since the early 1900s when von Neumann grew up. [1]: https://web.archive.org/web/20011126182532/http://infoshare1.princeton.edu:2003/libraries/firestone/rbsc/finding_aids/mathoral/pm02.htm https://web.archive.org/web/20011126182532/http://infoshare1... Overall I think von Neumann is someone particularly unique. Not because of his creativity, nor because of insight, sure he may have had these qualities but so did many other people. What is unique about him is his speed. Looking at some of these interviews on several occasions it seems that von Neumann was literally making up new proofs for some theorem on the spot. Whether he thought about them beforehand or whether he did truly make them up on the spot is of course in question, but it seems he did it often enough one might could not be blamed for believing that the latter version is what he really did. I would also note a strange fascination that HN seems to have with von Neumann, as I see him here quite regularly and I can understand for some the worship is excessive, so it is important to note even someone of his caliber can make mistakes, the most important one I believe is already mentioned in this thread which is the mathematicization of the measurement problem. Everyone can make mistakes, and absolutely no one is immune from this.