John von Neumann Concepts

The Man From the Future: The Visionary Life of John Von Neumann

by Ananyo Bhattacharya · 6 Oct 2021 · 476pp · 121,460 words

to me. ‘If people do not believe that mathematics is simple, it is only because they do not realize how complicated life is.’ John von Neumann INTRODUCTION: Who Was John von Neumann? ‘Von Neumann would carry on a conversation with my three-year-old son, and the two of them would talk as equals, and

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chosen missions, the ‘Self-Replicating Systems’ (SRS) group started defensively, carefully laying out the theoretical case that what they proposed was possible at all. ‘John von Neumann’, they conclude sniffily, ‘and a large number of other researchers in theoretical computer science following him have shown that there are numerous alternative strategies by

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That possibility has become known as the technological ‘singularity’ – and that term was first used by someone who had foreseen the possibility decades earlier: John von Neumann.99 In the eleven months that he was hospitalized, von Neumann received a stream of visitors – family, friends, collaborators and the military men with whom

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Select Bibliography Abella, Alex, 2008, Soldiers of Reason: The RAND Corporation and the Rise of the American Empire, Harcourt, San Diego, Calif. Aspray, William, 1990, John von Neumann and the Origins of Modern Computing, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass. Baggott, Jim, 2003, Beyond Measure: Modern Physics, Philosophy and the Meaning of Quantum Theory, Oxford

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Cambridge, Mass. Hargittai, István, 2006, The Martians of Science: Five Physicists Who Changed the Twentieth Century, Oxford University Press, Oxford. Heims, Steve J., 1982, John von Neumann and Norbert Wiener: From Mathematics to the Technologies of Life and Death, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass. Hoddeson, Lillian, Henriksen, Paul W., Meade, Roger A. and

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Vintage, New York. Lukacs, John, 1998, Budapest 1900: A Historical Portrait of a City and Its Culture, Grove Press, New York. Macrae, Norman, 1992, John von Neumann: The Scientific Genius Who Pioneered the Modern Computer, Game Theory, Nuclear Deterrence and Much More, Pantheon Books, New York. McDonald, John, 1950, Strategy in Poker

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: 1997, The Man without Qualities, trans. Sophie Wilkins, Picador, London. Nasar, Sylvia, 1998, A Beautiful Mind, Simon & Schuster, New York. Neumann, John von, 2005, John von Neumann: Selected Letters, ed. Miklós Rédei, American Mathematical Society, Providence, R.I. Neumann, John von, 2012, The Computer and the Brain, Yale University Press, New Haven

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Annotated Turing: A Guided Tour Through Alan Turing’s Historic Paper on Computability and the Turing Machine, Wiley, Hoboken. Poundstone, William, 1992, Prisoner’s Dilemma: John von Neumann, Game Theory and the Puzzle of the Bomb, Doubleday, New York. Reid, Constance, 1986, Hilbert-Courant, Springer, New York. Sime, Ruth Lewin, 1996,

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Physics, University of California Press, Berkeley. Susskind, Leonard, 2015, Quantum Mechanics: The Theoretical Minimum, Penguin, London. Taub, A. H. (ed.), 1963, Collected Works of John von Neumann, 6 volumes, New York: Pergamon Press. Teller, Edward (with Judith Shoolery), 2001, Memoirs: A Twentieth-Century Journey in Science and Politics, Perseus, Cambridge, Mass. Ulam

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University Press, Princeton. Von Neumann, John, and Morgenstern, Oskar, 1944, Theory of Games and Economic Behavior, Princeton University Press, Princeton. Vonneuman, Nicholas A., 1987, John von Neumann as Seen by His Brother, P.O. Box 3097 Meadowbrook, Pa. Whitman, Marina von Neumann, 2012, The Martian’s Daughter, University of Michigan Press, Ann

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Arbor. Wolfram, Steven, 2002, A New Kind of Science, Wolfram Media, Champagne, Ill. Notes INTRODUCTION: WHO WAS JOHN VON NEUMANN? 1. Albert Einstein, 1922, Sidelights on Relativity, E. P. Dutton and Company, New York. 2. Freeman Dyson, 2018, personal communication. CHAPTER 1: MADE IN

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Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften, Rowohlt Verlag, Berlin. English edition: 1997, The Man without Qualities, trans. Sophie Wilkins, Picador, London. 4. Nicholas A. Vonneuman, 1987, John von Neumann as Seen by His Brother, P.O. Box 3097, Meadowbrook, Pa. 5. Ibid. 6. Formidable but not infallible. His school friend Eugene Wigner recalled that

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, Psychologie des Schachspiels, deGruyter, Berlin). 9. Klára von Neumann, Johnny, quoted in George Dyson, 2012, Turing’s Cathedral, Pantheon Books, New York. 10. Vonneuman, John von Neumann as Seen by His Brother. 11. Ibid. 12. Ibid. Von Neumann was among several early computer pioneers to be inspired by this ingenious mechanism, which

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Mathematical Society, 60(2) (2013), pp. 154–61. 7. Andrew Janos, 1982, The Politics of Backwardness in Hungary, Princeton University Press, Princeton. 8. Vonneuman, John von Neumann as Seen by His Brother. 9. Hearings (1955), United States: US Government Printing Office. 10. Pál Prónay, 1963, A hatarban a halal kaszal: Fejezetek Prónay

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-Courant. 17. Bertrand Russell, 1967, The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell: 1872–1914 (2000 edn), Routledge, New York. 18. Ibid. 19. Reid, Hilbert-Courant. 20. John von Neumann, ‘Zur Einführung der transfiniten Zahlen’, Acta Scientiarum Mathematicarum (Szeged), 1(4) (1923), pp. 199–208. 21. Von Kármán, The Wind and Beyond. In 2008, the

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of Physics, College Park, MD USA, www.aip.org/history-programs/niels-bohr-library/oral-histories/4964. 38. ‘With Nordheim and (nominally) Hilbert’: David Hilbert, John von Neumann and Lothar Nordheim, ‘Über die Grundlagen der Quantenmechanik’, Mathematische Annalen, 98 (1927), pp. 1–30; ‘later on his own’: J. von Neumann, ‘Mathematische Begründung

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der Quantenmechanik’, Nachrichten von der Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen (1927), pp. 1–57, and John von Neumann, ‘Allgemeine Eigenwerttheorie Hermitescher Funktionaloperatoren’, Mathematische Annalen, 102 (1929), pp. 49–131. 39. Physicist Erich Hückel is credited with writing the poem. Translated by Felix Bloch

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: Mathematics in the Service of Rhetorics’, Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics, 60 (2017), pp. 136–48. 71. Michael Stöltzner, 1999, ‘What John von Neumann Thought of the Bohm Interpretation’, in D. Greenberger et al. (eds.), Epistemological and Experimental Perspectives on Quantum Physics, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht. 72. Einstein to

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1980, https://conservancy.umn.edu/bitstream/handle/11299/107333/oh018hhg.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y. 9. Ulam, Adventures of a Mathematician. 10. Quoted in Macrae, John von Neumann. 11. Von Neumann Whitman, The Martian’s Daughter. 12. ‘It’s basically Angry Birds,’ says historian Thomas Haigh. http://opentranscripts.org/transcript/working-on-

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eniac-lost-labors-information-age/. 13. Quoted in Dyson, Turing’s Cathedral. 14. Quoted in ibid. 15. Quoted in Macrae, John von Neumann. 16. Von Neumann Whitman, The Martian’s Daughter. 17. Quoted in Dyson, Turing’s Cathedral. 18. https://libertyellisfoundation.org/passenger-details/czoxMzoiOTAxMTk4OTg3MDU0MSI7/czo4OiJtYW5pZmVzdCI7. 19.

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Ruth Lewin Sime, 1996, Lise Meitner: A Life in Physics, University of California Press, Berkeley. 20. John von Neumann, 2005, John von Neumann: Selected Letters, ed. Miklós Rédei, American Mathematical Society, Providence, R.I. 21. Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar and John von Neumann, 1942, ‘The Statistics of the Gravitational Field Arising from a Random Distribution of Stars. I. The Speed

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University Press, Cambridge. 28. The discovery was kept secret until after the war. 29. Quoted in Hoddeson et al., Critical Assembly. 30. John von Neumann, 1963, Oblique Reflection of Shocks, in John von Neumann: Collected Works, ed. A. H, Taub, vol. 6: Theory of Games, Astrophysics, Hydrodynamics and Meteorology, Pergamon Press, Oxford. 31. Hoddeson et

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1982, https://www.archives.gov/research/japanese-americans/justice-denied. 36. Von Neumann’s notes on the Target Committee’s agenda are taken from Macrae, John von Neumann. 37. http://www.dannen.com/decision/targets.html. 38. https://www.1945project.com/portfolio-item/shigeko-matsumoto/. 39. The Committee for the Compilation of

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Haigh, Mark Priestley and Crispin, Rope, 2016, ENIAC in Action: Making and Remaking the Modern Computer, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass., and William Aspray, 1990, John von Neumann and the Origins of Modern Computing, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass. 2. A slightly longer excerpt is quoted in Leonard, Von Neumann, Morgenstern, and the Creation

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extra space for printing states. Nonetheless, it does reproduce the expected sequence exactly – even if there are gaps in between for ‘rough working’. 36. John von Neumann, 1963, ‘The General and Logical Theory of Automata’, lecture given at the Hixon Symposium on Cerebral Mechanisms in Behaviour, 20 September 1948, reproduced in Collected

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time, the EDVAC architecture as a unified whole. See ibid. 49. Von Neumann to Aaron Townshend, 6 June 1946, quoted in Aspray, John von Neumann and the Origins of Modern Computing. 50. John von Neumann, deposition concerning EDVAC report, n.d. [1947], IAS, quoted in Dyson, Turing’s Cathedral. 51. Von Neumann to Frankel, 29

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a takeover in 1986 by Burroughs, a business machines maker, the combined company became the computer giant Unisys. 54. Norbert Wiener to John von Neumann, 24 March 1945. Quoted in both Macrae, John von Neumann, and Dyson, Turing’s Cathedral. 55. Minutes of the Regular Meeting of the Board of Trustees, Institute for Advanced Study,

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Regular Meeting of the Board of Trustees, Institute for Advanced Study, 19 October 1945, quoted in Goldstine, The Computer from Pascal to von Neumann. 59. John von Neumann to Lewis Strauss, October 1945, quoted in Andrew Robinson (ed.), 2013, Exceptional Creativity in Science and Technology: Individuals, Institutions, and Innovations, Templeton Press, West

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9. Emanuel Lasker, Lasker’s Manual of Chess, New York: Dover, 1976 (original: Lehrbuch des Schachspiels, 1926; first English translation, 1927)], quoted in ibid. 10. John von Neumann, ‘Zur Theorie der Gesellschaftsspiele’, Mathematische Annalen, 100 (1928), pp. 295–320. Translation by Sonya Bargmann, ‘On the Theory of Games of Strategy’, Contributions to the

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Econometrica, 21 (1953), pp. 95–6. 16. Maurice Fréchet, ‘Commentary on the Three Notes of Emile Borel’, Econometrica, 21 (1953), pp. 118–24. 17. John von Neumann, ‘Communication on the Borel Notes’, Econometrica 21 (1953), pp. 124–5. 18. Halperin Interview, The Princeton Mathematics Community in the 1930s, Transcript Number 18 (PMC18

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. 19. Péter Rózsa, Játék a Végtelennel, 1945. Translated by Z. P. Dienes, Playing with Infinity: Mathematical Explorations and Excursions, Dover Publications, New York. 20. John von Neumann, ‘Über ein ökonomisches Gleichungssystem und eine Verallgemeinerung des Brouwerschen Fixpunktsatzes’, Ergebnisse eines Mathematische Kolloquiums, 8 (1937), ed. Karl Menger, pp. 73–83, 21. Translated as

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Diary, 26 October 1940. 38. Ibid., 22 January 1941. 39. Ibid. 40. Israel Halperin, 1990, ‘The Extraordinary Inspiration of John von Neumann’, in Proceedings of Symposia in Pure Mathematics, vol. 50: The Legacy of John von Neumann, ed. James Glimm, John Impagliazzo and Isadore Singer, American Mathematical Society, Providence, R.I., pp. 15–17. 41. Morgenstern

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theguardian.com/books/2002/mar/26/biography.highereducation. 42. Leonard, Von Neumann, Morgenstern, and the Creation of Game Theory. 43. Steve J. Heims, 1982, John von Neumann and Norbert Wiener: From Mathematics to the Technologies of Life and Death, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass. 44. Quoted in Dyson, Turing’s Cathedral. 45. Quoted

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. Alexander Field, ‘Schelling, von Neumann, and the Event That Didn’t Occur’, Games, 5(1) (2014), pp. 53–89. 57. Ulam, ‘John von Neumann 1903–1957’. 58. Eugene Wigner, 1957. ‘John von Neumann (1903–1957)’, Yearbook of the American Philosophical Society, later in 1967, Symmetries and Reflections: Scientific Essays of Eugene P. Wigner, Indiana University

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–27. 3. Correspondence with author. 4. What could possibly go wrong? 5. Von Neumann, ‘The General and Logical Theory of Automata’. 6. Ibid. 7. John von Neumann, ‘The General and Logical Theory of Automata’, originally published in Lloyd A. Jeffress (ed.), 1951, Cerebral Mechanisms in Behavior: The Hixon Symposium, Wiley, New York

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91. Robert Jastrow, 1981, The Enchanted Loom: Mind in the Universe, Simon and Schuster, New York. 92. https://www.gsmaintelligence.com/data/. 93. Jeremy Bernstein, ‘John von Neumann and Klaus Fuchs: An Unlikely Collaboration’, Physics in Perspective, 12 (2010), pp. 36–50. 94. Philip J. Hilts, 1982, Scientific Temperaments: Three Lives in Contemporary

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Science, Simon and Schuster, New York. 95. Dyson, Turing’s Cathedral. 96. John von Neumann, 2012 (first published 1958), The Computer and the Brain, Yale University Press, New Haven. 97. Von Neumann, The Computer and the Brain. 98. Robert Epstein

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David Hoffman, the film’s producer, for sending me the DVD in 2019. Now available to watch here: https://archive.org/details/JohnVonNeumannY2jiQXI6nrE. 101. Macrae, John von Neumann. 102. ‘Benoît Mandelbrot – Post-doctoral Studies: Weiner and Von Neumann (36/144)’, Web of Stories – Life Stories of Remarkable People, https://www.youtube.

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in von Neumann Whitman, The Martian’s Daughter. 105. Quoted in Dyson, Turing’s Cathedral. 106. Quoted in ibid. 107. Email to author. 108. John von Neumann, Documentary Mathematical Association of America, 1966. 109. Ulam, Adventures of a Mathematician. 110. Quoted in Dyson, Turing’s Cathedral. 111. Quoted in von Neumann Whitman

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FUTURE? 1. Frank, J. Tipler, ‘Extraterrestrial Beings Do Not Exist’, Quarterly Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society, 21(267) (1981). 2. Ulam, ‘John von Neumann 1903–1957’. 3. Heims, John von Neumann and Norbert Wiener. 4. Von Neumann to Rudolf Ortvay, 29 March 1939, in von Neumann, Selected Letters. 5. ‘Benoît Mandelbrot – A Touching Gesture

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Neumann’, Web of Stories – Life Stories of Remarkable People, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wu6vGDk5kzY. 6. Interview with author, 14 January, 2019. 7. John von Neumann, ‘Can We Survive Technology?’, Fortune, June 1955. Image credits Photos courtesy of Marina Von Neumann-Whitman. Page 71. Stanislaw Ulam papers, American Philosophical Society. Page

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Pennsylvania archives. Pages 131, 139. Shelby White and Leon Levy Archives Center, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton. Page 158. Theory of Games and Economic Behavior, John Von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern, Princeton University Press. Pages 194, 196. RAND Corporation. Page 240. The Martin Gardner Literary Interests/Special Collection, Stanford University Library. Courtesy

Theory of Games and Economic Behavior: 60th Anniversary Commemorative Edition (Princeton Classic Editions)

by John von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern · 19 Mar 2007

Theory of Games and Economic Behavior Theory of Games and Economic Behavior John von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern With an introduction by Harold W. Kuhn and an afterword by Ariel Rubinstein SIXTIETH-ANNIVERSARY EDITION Copyright © 1944 by Princeton University Press

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. ∞ press.princeton.edu Primed in the United States of America 9 10 Contents Introduction, BY HAROLD W. KUHN Theory of Games and Economic Behavior BY JOHN VON NEUMANN AND OSKAR MORGENSTERN Afterword, BY ARIEL RUBINSTEIN REVIEWS The American Journal of Sociology, BY HERBERT A. SIMON Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society, BY ARTHUR

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Business Problems, BY WILL LISSNER A Theory of Strategy, BY JOHN MCDONALD The Collaboration between Oskar Morgenstern and John von Neumann on the Theory of Games, BY OSKAR MORGENSTERN Index Credits Introduction HAROLD W. KUHN Although John von Neumann was without doubt “the father of game theory,” the birth took place after a number of miscarriages

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at Princeton, a story that illustrates the strong element of chance in human affairs. The story starts with two visits by George Dantzig to visit John von Neumann in the fall of 1947 and the spring of 1948. In the first visit Dantzig described his new theory of “linear programming” only to be

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–8. 5. von Neumann, J. (1928) “Zur theorie der Gesellschaftsspiele,” Math. Ann. 100, 295–300. 6. Morgenstern, O. (1976) “The collaboration of Oskar Morgerstern and John von Neumann on the theory of games,” Journal of Economic Literature 14, 805–16. 7. Leonard, R. J. (1995) “From parlor games to social science: von Neumann

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Palgrave Dictionary of Economics (New York: W. W. Norton), 1–53. *Starred reviews are included in the book. THEORY OF GAMES AND ECONOMIC BEHAVIOR By JOHN VON NEUMANN, and OSKAR MORGENSTERN CONTENTS PREFACE TECHNICAL NOTE ACKNOWLEDGMENT CHAPTER I FORMULATION OF THE ECONOMIC PROBLEM 1. THE MATHEMATICAL METHOD IN ECONOMICS 1.1. Introductory remarks

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rigorous approach to these subjects, involving, as they do, questions of parallel or opposite interest, perfect or imperfect information, free rational decision or chance influences. JOHN VON NEUMANN OSKAR MORGENSTERN. PRINCETON, N. J. January, 1943. PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION The second edition differs from the first in some minor respects only. We have

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–925) and of J. Marschak (“Neumann’s and Morgenstern’s New Approach to Static Economics,” Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 54, (1946), pp. 97–115). JOHN VON NEUMANN OSKAR MORGENSTERN PRINCETON, N. J. September, 1946. PREFACE TO THIRD EDITION The Third Edition differs from the Second Edition only in the elimination of such

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particular our discussion and selection of “natural operations” in those sections covers what seems to us the relevant substrate of the Samuelson-Malinvaud “independence axiom.” JOHN VON NEUMANN OSKAR MORGENSTERN PRINCETON, N. J. January, 1953. TECHNICAL NOTE The nature of the problems investigated and the techniques employed in this book necessitate a procedure

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makes it hard for them to give the reader, through examples, a feeling for the power and the beauty of the new approach. The authors—John von Neumann, a mathematician’s mathematician and Oskar Morgenstern, a well known economist of the Austrian school— start out by stating their credo: Traditional mathematical economics has

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of strategy like poker, chess and solitaire has caused a sensation among professional economists. The theory has been worked out in its beginnings by Dr. John von Neumann, Professor of Mathematics at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, N.J., and Dr. Oskar Morgenstern, Professor of Economics at Princeton University. In its present

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in games of chance and strategy, however, to experts in higher mathematics. Example of Analysis of Business Strategy To make the mathematical thinking of Dr. John von Neumann and Dr. Oskar Morgenstern more easily understandable, Leonid Hurwicz of the Cowles Commission for Research in Economics, with the aid of Mrs. D. Friedlander of

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it be appreciated. It was originated by one of the chief participants in the development of the bomb, the young and already great contemporary mathematician, John von Neumann, whose work in games was given a preliminary exploration in an essay on poker in Fortune (March, 1948). This story began more than a year

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of strategy. When the first part of the story was published (March, 1948), however, it seemed that we had the bear by the tail. Madiematician John von Neumann, unknown to the poker-playing fraternity, had got there first and really made something out of it. Von Neumann’s poker had become the essence

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. And yet even now, as theory, it has performed an important service in illuminating the meaning of strategy. *Theory of Games and Economic Behavior, by John von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern, Princeton University Press, 1944. Second revised edition, 1947, 10. *Fortune’s story gave their first moves, their choices, and risks. How these

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counterattack is to imitate your opponent’s mistake for stronger hands and to take contrary action for weaker hands. The Collaboration between Oskar Morgenstern and John von Neumann on the Theory of Games OSKAR MORGENSTERN Time and again since the publication of the Theory of Games and Economic Behavior in 1944 the question

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up, a mathematician named Eduard Čech came up to me and said that the questions I had raised were identical with those dealt with by John von Neumann in a paper on the Theory of Games published in 1928 [18], the same year that I had published my book on economic forecasting [10

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of modern logic for the social sciences [13, 1936]. A little later Karl Menger urged me to attend a meeting of his Colloquium in which John von Neumann, on one of his trips from America to Europe, would speak and present a theory of the expanding economy, which he did in 1937. Unfortunately

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–93. Reprinted in Schotter [22, 1976]. 15. ———. “Demand Theory Reconsidered,” Quart. J. Econ., Feb. 1948, 62, pp. 165–201. Reprinted in Schotter [22, 1976]. 16. ———. “John von Neumann, 1903–1957,” Econ. J., March 1958, 68, pp. 170–74. Reprinted in Schotter [22, 1976]. 17. ——— and Thompson, Gerald L. Mathematical theory of expanding and

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. Volume IV. Edited by Emile Borel et al. Paris: Gautier-Villars, 1938, pp. 105–13. 24. Wald, Abraham. “Theory of Games and Economic Behavior by John von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern,” Rea. Econ. Statist, 1947, 29(1), pp. 47–52. 25. Whitehead, Alfred North. Science and the modern world. New York: Macmillan, 1925

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. A Theory of Strategy, by John McDonald. Reprinted with permission from Fortune (1949): 100–110. Copyright © 1949 Time Inc. The Collaboration between Oskar Morgenstern and John von Neumann on the Theory of Games, by Oskar Morgenstern. Reprinted by permission of American Economic Association from Journal of Economic Literature (September 1976) 14 (3): 805

Prisoner's Dilemma: John Von Neumann, Game Theory, and the Puzzle of the Bomb

by William Poundstone · 2 Jan 1993 · 323pp · 100,772 words

and Melvin Dresher contributed importantly to this book with their recollections of their work and of the RAND milieu. Much of the biographical material on John von Neumann, including the letters quoted, comes from the collection of von Neumann’s papers at the Library of Congress Manuscript Division, Washington, D.C. Some historical

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Tchalenko, Edward Teller, and Nicholas A. Vonneuman. CONTENTS Cover Other Books by this Author Title Page Dedication Acknowledgments 1 DILEMMAS The Nuclear Dilemma John von Neumann Prisoner’s Dilemma 2 JOHN VON NEUMANN The Child Prodigy Kun’s Hungary Early Career The Institute Klara Personality The Sturm und Drang Period The Best Brain in the World

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fact, the preventive war movement found support among many of undeniable intelligence, including two of the most brilliant mathematicians of the time: Bertrand Russell and John von Neumann. Mathematicians are not usually known for their political opinions, or for worldly views of any kind. In most respects Russell and von Neumann were quite

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good of all humanity? What should a person do when his or her interests conflict with the common good? JOHN VON NEUMANN Perhaps no one exemplifies the agonizing dilemma of the bomb better than John von Neumann (1903–1957). That name does not mean much to most people. The celebrity mathematician is almost a nonexistent species

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the common good in a prisoner’s dilemma? The attempt to answer this question is one of the great intellectual adventures of our time. 2 JOHN VON NEUMANN John von Neumann was born in Budapest, Hungary, on December 28, 1903. “John” is anglicized from János, his given name. In Hungary, he was called by the diminutive

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,000 people were killed, often by lynch mobs who operated without government interference. It is estimated that about 100,000 people fled Hungary. EARLY CAREER John von Neumann became part of an exodus of Jewish intellectuals who left Hungary for Germany and then Germany for the United States. As Johnny approached college age

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of twelve. Then she would live with her father through age eighteen. “My mother felt very strongly that any kid who was John von Neumann’s daughter should get to know John von Neumann,” Marina said in a 1972 Life magazine interview. “It was very carefully worked out that I would live with him in my

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other conclusion from reading her letters. Even the earliest letters, written in the very springtime of their love, abound with threats and ominous undertones. If John von Neumann wasn’t the easiest person in the world to live with, neither was Klara. In a letter written at the Grand Hotel, Montecatini Terme, Italy

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moving violations in New York City and submitted the tickets to IBM, which had a downtown Manhattan office conveniently near City Hall. The fascination of John von Neumann derives from his contradictions. He was a mild, charming man who conceived starting a nuclear war and suspected the human race was doomed by its

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—as nearly as possible, as much of the time as possible.” What was the horrible nature? In an interview with journalist Steve J. Heims (in John Von Neumann and Norbert Wiener: From Mathematics to the Technologies of Life and Death, 1980), Eugene Wigner asserted that “Johnny believed in having sex, in pleasure, but

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Germany itself, where postwar commanders fought each other with tin replicas of the regiments denied them by the Treaty of Versailles. In Budapest, the young John von Neumann played an improvised Kriegspiel with his brothers. They sketched out castles, highways, and coastlines on graph paper, then advanced and retreated “armies” according to rules

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changed the face of war. Few realized that more than the British mathematician, philosopher, and mystic, Bertrand Russell (1872–1970). There are many parallels between John von Neumann and Bertrand Russell, despite more numerous and telling differences. Both men were among the most respected thinkers of their time, and both were, for a

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the first times such explosions were announced beforehand. About 40,000 people watched the Crossroads blasts, including a number of scientific, political, and press dignitaries. John von Neumann was among them. There were even two representatives of the Soviet Union. The bomb, whose very size and shape was still a secret, was hidden

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on the everyday lives of succeeding generations is greatest. “In today’s world, the unmodified word ‘computer’ normally refers to some version of the machine John von Neumann invented in the 1940s,” Arno Penzias wrote in Ideas and Information (1989). If this overstates von Neumann’s importance among the handful of computer pioneers

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prodigious arithmetical calculations. A Canadian magazine editor clipped the item and addressed a letter to “Professor Neumann” at Princeton, where it was duly forwarded to John von Neumann. Von Neumann wrote back saying, of course, that it was a canard. PREVENTIVE WAR Meanwhile, Bertrand Russell took the step he himself had rejected, that

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, we’ve got the bombs to do the job/Why let the despots thrive/ … Blast them to kingdom come/Let not the savage gang survive!” John von Neumann at afternoon tea, Institute for Advanced Study. (Photo by Alfred Eisenstaedt, Life magazine, © Time Warner Inc.) Von Neumann lecturing to students. He was notorious for

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. Von Neumann and J. Robert Oppenheimer at unveiling of the Institute for Advanced Study’s computer. (Photo by Alan W. Richards, © Mrs. Alan W. Richards) John von Neumann, confined to wheelchair, receives the Medal of Freedom from President Eisenhower. This was von Neumann’s last public appearance. (Photo © UPI/Bettmann Newsphotos) Robert Axelrod

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hats. Herman Kahn, one of RAND’s best-known analysts, interrupted his thinking about the unthinkable to take a midday swim in the Pacific. When John von Neumann visited, he usually stayed in the nearby Georgian Hotel, still in business, now as an oceanfront home for senior citizens. To many, the RAND Corporation

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of the above workers had left by 1960, but the RAND diaspora continued to dominate game theory throughout the academic world. VON NEUMANN AT RAND John von Neumann’s formal association with the RAND Corporation began in 1948. On December 16, 1947, Williams, then of Project RAND, wrote offering von Neumann a retainer

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earned him the Nobel prize in 1934. Joseph E. Mayer, also of the University of Chicago, was sufficiently convinced that Urey’s talk would interest John von Neumann that he sent him an advance copy for comment. Urey posed three related scenarios: … let us assume that the USSR is developing this bomb; and

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essentially everything then known about atomic weapons—including lines of speculation for an H-bomb (the “super”). It had been written by Klaus Fuchs and John von Neumann. That Fuchs and von Neumann were asked to write the patent paper testified both to the trust placed in them by the Los Alamos community

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, there was a correction to the early euphoria. Game theory was deprecated, distrusted, even reviled. To many, game theory, ever intertwined with the figure of John von Neumann, appeared to encapsulate a callous cynicism about the fate of the human race. A few examples will show the severity of this reappraisal. In a

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of game theory should dim these greedy hopes. Misgivings continued well into the 1980s and perhaps to the present day. Steve J. Heims, in his John Von Neumann and Norbert Wiener (1980) wrote: “Game theory portrays a world of people relentlessly and ruthlessly but with intelligence and calculation pursuing what each perceives to

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than the Soviets did. On August 5, 1955, Eisenhower created the President’s Special Committee on Disarmament. The AEC’s delegate to this committee was John von Neumann. On September 6, Harold Stassen, the new U.S. delegate to the UN, announced disheartening news. The United States “put a reservation” on its support

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. R., with Joseph DiMona. The Ends of Power. New York: Times Books, 1978. Halmos, Paul. “The Legend of John von Neumann.” In American Mathematical Monthly 80, no. 4 (April 1973): 382–94. Heims, Steve J. John von Neumann and Norbert Wiener: From Mathematics to the Technologies of Life and Death. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1980. Hobbes

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. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1956. Ulam, Stanislaw. Adventures of a Mathematician. New York: Scribner’s, 1976. ______. “John von Neumann 1903–1957.” In Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society (May 1958): 1–49. Vonneuman, Nicholas A. John Von Neumann as Seen by His Brother. Meadowbrook, Pa. (P.O. Box 3097, Meadowbrook, PA 19406), 1987. Williams, J

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House, Inc. Anchor Books and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc. The quotes from letters of John von Neumann on pp. 22, 65, 75, 140–41, and 180 are from materials in the John von Neumann archives, Library of Congress, and are used with permission of Marina von Neumann Whitman. The excerpts from “The

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Spin

by Robert Charles Wilson · 2 Jan 2005 · 541pp · 146,445 words

understand that. The Martian replicators aren't unique. They ran into what you call an ecology—" "A von Neumann ecology." (After the twentieth-century mathematician John von Neumann, who first suggested the possibility of self-reproducing machines.) "A von Neumann ecology, and they were absorbed by it. But that doesn't tell us

Accelerando

by Stross, Charles · 22 Jan 2005 · 489pp · 148,885 words

." He carefully pulls a fabric-bound document out of the obsolescent data wall and shows the spine to Manfred: "On the Theory of Games, by John von Neumann. Signed first edition." Aineko meeps and dumps a slew of confusing purple finite state automata into Manfred's left eye. The hardback is dusty and

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'll figure out what we are sooner or later. Part 2 Point of Inflexion Life is a process which may be abstracted from other media. – John Von Neumann Chapter 1 Halo The asteroid is running Barney: it sings of love on the high frontier, of the passion of matter for replicators, and its

The Biggest Bluff: How I Learned to Pay Attention, Master Myself, and Win

by Maria Konnikova · 22 Jun 2020 · 377pp · 117,339 words

help shed light on what was happening, that would allow me to regain some semblance of control. And in my reading frenzy, I came across John von Neumann’s Theory of Games and Economic Behavior. Von Neumann was one of the greatest mathematical and strategic minds of the twentieth century: he invented that

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reply. You see, he explains, my system didn’t work quite as planned. He is now flat broke. The place is Monte Carlo, and while John von Neumann’s system does indeed have some kinks to work out, it will eventually give birth to some of the most powerful applied mathematics of the

Why Stock Markets Crash: Critical Events in Complex Financial Systems

by Didier Sornette · 18 Nov 2002 · 442pp · 39,064 words

based on guesses about what the other player is going to do next. Game theory was ﬁrst adapted to economics in the 1940s by mathematician John von Neumann (the same von Neumann whose theoretical insights made the computer possible) and economist O. Morgenstern. Since then, the standard economics and social science model of

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, 4828–4858. 427. Trueman, B. (1994). Analyst forecasts and herding behavior, The Review of Financial Studies 7, 97–124. 428. Ulam, S. (1959). Tribute to John von Neumann, Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society 64, 1–49. 429. U.S. Committee of the Global Atmospheric Research Program (1975). Understanding Climatic Change—A Program

The Demon in the Machine: How Hidden Webs of Information Are Finally Solving the Mystery of Life

by Paul Davies · 31 Jan 2019 · 253pp · 83,473 words

computational process into a physical construction process. A MACHINE THAT COPIES ITSELF Across the other side of the Atlantic from Alan Turing, the Hungarian émigré John von Neumann was similarly preoccupied with designing an electronic computer for military application, in his case in connection with the Manhattan Project (the atomic bomb). He used

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from the legion of ghostly overlapping pseudo-realities characteristic of the quantum micro-world. So vexatious is this problem that a handful of physicists, including John von Neumann of universal constructor fame, suggested that the ‘concretizing factor’ (often called ‘the collapse of the wave function’) might be the mind of the experimenter. In

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Press, 1994) C. H. Lineweaver, P. C. W. Davies and M. Ruse (eds.), Complexity and the Arrow of Time (Cambridge University Press, 2013) Norman MacRae, John von Neumann: The Scientific Genius Who Pioneered the Modern Computer, Game Theory, Nuclear Deterrence, and Much More (American Mathematical Society; 2nd edn, 1999) J. P. S. Peterson

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Entscheidungsproblem’, Proceedings of the London Mathematical Society, ser. 2, vol. 42 (1937). See also http://www.turingarchive.org/browse.php/b/12. 3. Ibid. 4. John von Neumann, Theory of Self-reproducing Automata (University of Illinois Press, 1966). 5. George F. R. Ellis, Denis Noble and Timothy O’Connor, ‘Top-down causation: an

Tools for Thought: The History and Future of Mind-Expanding Technology

by Howard Rheingold · 14 May 2000 · 352pp · 120,202 words

that he carried nonconformity to weird extremes. At the age of forty-two, he committed suicide, hounded cruelly by the same government he helped save. John von Neumann spoke five languages and knew dirty limericks in all of them. His colleagues, famous thinkers in their own right, all agreed that the operations of

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. He was one of history's most brilliant physicists, logicians, and mathematicians, as well as the software genius who invented the first electronic digital computer. John von Neumann was the center of the group who created the "stored program" concept that made truly powerful computers possible, and he specified a template that is

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game-playing machines were commercial failures, his theoretical approach created a foundation for the future science of game theory, scooping even that twentieth-century genius John von Neumann by about a hundred years. It was Charley and Ada's attempt to develop an infallible system for betting on the ponies that brought Ada

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, and the midwives were many--from Alan Turing's British team who needed a special kind of computing device to crack the German code, to John von Neumann's mathematicians at Los Alamos who were faced with the almost insurmountable calculations involved in making the atomic bomb, to Norbert Weiner's researchers who

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--led directly but unexpectedly to computation. In the first decades of the twentieth century, mathematicians and logicians were trying to formalize mathematics. David Hilbert and John von Neumann set down the rules of formalism in the 1920s (as we shall see in the next chapter). Before Hilbert and von Neumann, Alfred North Whitehead

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had yet to discover that the algebra invented by George Boole to formalize logical operations was identical with the mathematics used to describe switching circuits. John von Neumann and his colleagues had yet to devise the concept of stored programming. Norbert Wiener hadn't formalized the description of feedback circuits in control systems

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. The next step in both software and hardware history was precipitated by the thinking of another unique, probably indispensable figure in the history of programming -- John von Neumann. Turing had worked with von Neumann before the war, at Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study. Von Neumann wanted the young genius to stay on

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you asked ten thousand people to name the most influential thinker of the twentieth century, it is likely that not one of them would nominate John von Neumann. Few would even recognize his name. Despite his obscurity outside the communities of mathematicians and computer theorists, his thoughts had an incalculable impact on human

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von Neumann was one of the elite quantum physics revolutionaries in Gottingen, Germany, in the late twenties. And from 1933 until his death, he was John von Neumann of Princeton, New Jersey; Los Alamos, New Mexico; and Washington, D.C., known to professors and Presidents as "Johnny." Ada and Babbage could only dream

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, Turing-type computation, Babbage-Lovelace programming, and feedback-control theories were brought together because of the War Department's insatiable hunger for raw calculating power. John von Neumann was the only man who not only knew enough about the scientific issues but moved comfortably enough in the societies of Princeton and Los Alamos

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wisdom, were the secretary of Defense and his Deputies, the Secretaries of the Army, Navy, and Air Force, and all the military Chiefs of Staff." John von Neumann's political views, undoubtedly rooted in his upper-class Hungarian past, were unequivocal and extreme, according to the public record and his biographers. He not

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. He was one of the principal participants in both of the lines of thought that converged into the construction of ENIAC -- mathematical logic and ballistics. John von Neumann's role in the invention of computation began nearly twenty years before the ENIAC project. In the late 1920s, between his major contributions to quantum

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such a task. Making a digital computer was an engineering project that would require the kind of support that only a national government could afford. John von Neumann was at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton by the time young G�del and Turing came along. Although he was keenly aware of

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higher-ranking scientist was also searching for an ultrafast computing machine. Goldstine beat the other fellow to it. Goldstine found Mauchly and Eckert in 1942. John von Neumann, and chance, found Goldstine in 1944. John W. Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert have been properly credited with the invention of ENIAC, but before they

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of computing machinery, all the while pontificating about the most potent aspects of foreign policy to the leaders of the most powerful nation in history, John von Neumann was aiming for nothing less than the biggest secret of all. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, the most interesting scientific question of the

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software patriarchs who preceded them. Eccentrics and prodigies of both the blissful and agonized varieties dominated the early history of computation. Ada Lovelace, George Boole, John von Neumann, Alan Turing, and Presper Eckert were all in their early twenties or younger when they did their most important work. All except Eckert were also

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became part of the excited and dramatic debates that characterized the formative years of cybernetics. Biographer Steve Heims, in his book about the two men -- John von Neumann and Norbert Wiener -- noted the way their contrasting personae emerged at these events: Wiener and von Neumann cut rather different figures at the semiannual conferences

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," Mind, vol. 59, no. 236 (1950). [7] Ibid. [8] Hodges, Turing, 488. Chapter Four: Johnny Builds Bombs and Johnny Builds Brains [1] Steve J. Heims, John von Neumann and Norbert Wiener (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1980), 371. [2] C. Blair, "Passing of a great Mind," Life,, February 25, 1957, 96. [3] Stanislaw Ulam

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, "John von Neumann, 1903-1957," Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society, vol. 64, (1958), 4. [4] Goldstine, The Computer, 182. [5] Daniel Bell, The coming of Post-Industrial

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] Goldstine, The Computer, 196. [12] Hodges, Turing, 288. [13] Ibid., 288. [14] Goldstine, The Computer, 196-197. [15] Arthur W. Burks, Herman H. Goldstine, and John von Neumann, "Preliminary discussion of the Logical Design of an Electronic Computing Instrument," Datamation, September-October 1962. [16] Goldstine, The Computer, 242. [17] Manfred Eigen and Ruthlid

The Fractalist

by Benoit Mandelbrot · 30 Oct 2012

Employee, 1950–52 14. First Kepler Moment: The Zipf-Mandelbrot Distribution of Word Frequencies, 1951 15. Postdoctoral Grand Tour Begins at MIT, 1953 16. Princeton: John von Neumann’s Last Postdoc, 1953–54 17. Paris, 1954–55 18. Wooing and Marrying Aliette, 1955 19. In Geneva with Jean Piaget, Mark Kac, and Willy

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Pasteur and as a musician he would match Mozart. He chose biology and won a Nobel Prize. More important for me was the great mathematician John von Neumann, to be introduced later. Around 1920, Hungary, his motherland, was under a cloud of uncertainty far worse than Poland in 1920 and France in 1945

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had changed from chemical to aeronautical. Father could not possibly have heard of the advice received from the fathers of three famous Hungarians: the mathematician John von Neumann, who will play a large role in this story, and his contemporaries, the physicists Edward Teller and Eugene Wigner. Their fathers—far more prosperous and

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by Claude Shannon, Cybernetics, or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine by Norbert Wiener, and Theory of Games and Economic Behavior by John von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern. Except for a fleeting thought that I might return to mathematics in 1949 via the University of Chicago, I was beginning to

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Machine. “Cybernetics” was a word Wiener had just coined, and the title defined that word as ranging from brains to telephone switchboards. The second was John von Neumann, a professor at IAS, the Institute for Advanced Study, in Princeton. After MIT, I became von Neumann’s last postdoc there. He had written, with

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broad fashion. Sadly, RLE’s miraculous mix of old and new academic technology and science is only remembered by a few old men. 16 Princeton: John von Neumann’s Last Postdoc, 1953–54 “I MUST PROTEST! This is the worst lecture I ever heard. Not only do I see no relation to the

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see—often for the first time fully—what had been accomplished and should have been shared with the audience. As he sat down, the mathematician John von Neumann, father of the computer, stood up. “I invited Dr. Mandelbrot to spend the year here, and we have had very interesting conversations. If he allows

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Neumann sponsored. That lecture came about one day during a chat with Oppie on the commuter train. John von Neumann Many pure mathematicians I knew well—like Szolem or Paul Lévy—were not attuned to other fields. John von Neumann (1903–57) was a man of many trades—all sought after—and a known master of

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a mere survivor of the last century, and his feeling of being a mathematician unlike all the others. This feeling was widely shared. I recall John von Neumann saying in 1954, “I think I understand how every other mathematician operates, but Lévy is like a visitor from a strange planet. His own private

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in that textbook. He changed the subject. My suspicion that those references never existed was confirmed. Wiener’s nonobvious motivations are described in his memoir. John von Neumann seemed to seek the hottest topics of the day. What about Kolmogorov’s motivations? A 1962 talk he gave in Marseille on turbulence was raw

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1950s, his scientific talent had never been honed by competition. His ambition was boundless, with no inkling of the deep truth I had learned from John von Neumann: that a scientist shows mettle by identifying problems that are neither too easy nor too difficult. Science is best at giving credit for thinking big

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sent me to his manager, Herman Goldstine (1913–2004), director of mathematical sciences at that time. I had met him in Princeton when he was John von Neumann’s second in command; because I had been relatively unimportant at IBM, this was—since Princeton—the first real contact we had. “What brings you

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problems. Then, in 1953–54, when I was at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, another key ingredient began to take hold. My sponsor, John von Neumann, was trying to interest his colleagues in the equations of the weather. Only a handful of mathematical equations—already known in the eighteenth century—had

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indispensable intermediary who started the process that led me to Yale was a self-described “institutional economist,” Martin Shubik. We had met while I was John von Neumann’s postdoc at the Institute for Advanced Study and he was at Princeton University with Oskar Morgenstern (1902–77), Johnny’s coauthor on the book

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