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  • Recently I enjoyed very much The MANIAC by Benjamin Labatut:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_MANIAC

    by alkyon
  • By all accounts a magnificent intellect and certainly my hero. I am not sure what, if anything, will happen on the other side... but if I were to return as a human (and not a dung beetle as I expect), I would very much like to have his brain capacity. At least that is what I will put on the form if anyone or anything asks.

    Importantly, are we all genetically inferior or is there perhaps a component of nurture that we lack? How is it that we are all so stupid in comparison?

    by SA9G
  • Von Nuemann is one of those names that when ever it comes up I sarcastically mentally note "John f***ing Neumann, AGAIN!". It's happened so many times in my studies that I think he might be the most important scientist to have ever lived.

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

    by lwarfield
  • Related. Others?

    The legend of John von Neumann (1973) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8212335 - Aug 2014 (65 comments)

    The Legend of John von Neumann - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1427906 - June 2010 (4 comments)

    (Reposts are fine after a year or so; links to past threads are just to satisfy extra-curious readers)

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

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

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

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

    by chasd00
  • For a longer read, I can highly recommend the book "The Man from the Future" by Ananyo Bhattacharya. It's quite an easy read and extensively discusses the life and discoveries by John von Neumann in chronological order.
    by SimplyUnknown
  • When you look at it holistically, von Neumann was more influential in science and mathematics in the 20th century than either Einstein or Planck. He wasn't as obvious a symbol of the scientific revolution, but his contributions to SO MANY THINGS at a fundamental level makes him stand out to me.
    by srejk
  • My favorite von Neumann anecdote was a quote from Edward Teller: "von Neumann would carry on a conversation with my 3 year old son, and the two of them would talk as equals, and I sometimes wondered if he used the same principle when he talked to the rest of us."
    by breput

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