John von Neumann was smarter than the smartest. Hans Bethe, who won the Nobel
Prize in Physics, remarked: “I have sometimes wondered whether a brain like von Neumann’s does not indicate a
species superior to that of man.” He had a profound impact on quantum mechanics, the atomic bomb, the modern computer, game
theory, and self-replicating machines. The basis for all these contributions was
his exceptional understanding of mathematics. Growing up in Budapest, Johnny,
or Jancsi, as he was called, could reportedly multiply two eight-digit
numbers together in his head when he was six! His well-off Jewish parents fostered
an environment for learning. His father, Max, an economic
adviser to the Hungarian government, hosted intellectual dinners that
greatly influenced young Johnny The “von” was added to their surname after the
Austro-Hungarian Emperor elevated Max to nobility. Although times were good,
Max felt they wouldn’t last. As anti-Semitism spread through
Europe in the early 20th century, Max wanted to prepare his three
sons in case they needed to move. So, Johnny studied French, Italian,
English, Ancient Greek, and Latin. But his greatest strength lay in mathematics. Soon after enrolling in an elite prep school, his math teacher Gábor Szego was brought
to tears after their first meeting, as he had never experienced a mind like
Johnny’s. Lutheran school, Fasori Gimnázium But Max didn’t want his son
studying math at university, believing, “Mathematics does not make money.” So a compromise of sorts was struck. Johnny studied chemistry at the
University of Berlin for two years before enrolling at ETH Zurich, where he
earned his chemical engineering degree. At the same time, he completed his PhD in
mathematics at the University of Budapest, where he wrote his thesis on set theory. Set theory is the study of sets, which are
collections of objects, including numbers. They form the fundamental
building blocks of mathematics. Ananyo Bhattacharya, author of the
biography The Man From the Future, uses a great example to explain set theory: Imagine building a tower with Lego bricks. The 1st level has a single brick representing
the empty set, the foundation of all sets. The 2nd level includes the brick from
the 1st level and adds another brick, representing the set containing the empty set. The 3rd level builds on the previous two levels and adds another brick to represent
a new set containing these sets. After completing his formal education,
Johnny headed to Göttingen, Germany, the center of the math world, to study
under the esteemed David Hilbert. At the time, scientists and
mathematicians were trying to understand the strange behavior of particles
at the smallest scales, like electrons. Werner Heisenberg and Erwin
Schrödinger came up with two different ways to describe
how these particles behaved. Heinsenberg’s approach used a grid
with columns and rows representing the different energy states of electrons. Schrödinger described particles
as waves spread through space. Oddly, when these waves are observed, the wave function collapses,
and they behave like particles. It was as if they were talking
about two different things. Scientists like Paul Dirac had tried
to prove that the two were the same, but were not entirely successful. Johnny was. He proved that the two were
mathematically equivalent. Still in his early twenties, he
was already regarded as a legend. He received an offer to lecture
at the University of Berlin, where he enjoyed the cabaret shows
as much as the academic work. His next stint at the University
of Hamburg was also a short stay, as his chances of becoming a
tenured professor were slim. Then came an invitation from America to become a visiting lecturer in mathematical
physics at Princeton University. Oswald Veblen, a math professor at Princeton, wanted to entice Europe’s top talent
with huge salaries, in some cases, offering more than seven times what they
made in Germany. (In the case of Wigner) Germany was the leading scientific nation in the world, while the U.S. was considered
second-rate and wanted to catch up. Before accepting the position at Princeton, he married Mariette Kövesi also from a prosperous
Jewish family, whom he had known since childhood. Upon arriving in America with his wife in
January 1930, Johnny quickly settled in. Though, he did face an unexpected problem
when he tried to get a driver’s license. He failed his driving test so many times
that he had to bribe an examiner to pass him. An intersection at Princeton
University was nicknamed “von Neumannn corner” due to his
frequent accidents there. He’d have to buy a new car every
year after totaling the previous one, though was never seriously injured. He humorously explained his accidents this way: “I was proceeding down the road. The trees
on the right were passing me in orderly fashion at 60 miles an hour. Suddenly one
of them stepped in my path. Boom!” (page 66) Johnny picked a good time to leave Germany
as the Nazi party was growing in popularity. In January 1933, Hitler rose
to power and became Chancellor. Some lost half their staff overnight. German science never recovered. That same year, Johnny joined the recently
formed Institute for Advanced Study, a research institute in Princeton, New Jersey, where the greatest scientific minds, including
Einstein, were free to explore their ideas. He was the youngest recruit at 29 years old
and was often mistaken for a grad student. One of his most significant
contributions around this time was providing mathematical
proof of the ergodic hypothesis. This hypothesis suggests that a system will
eventually explore and visit all the possible states it can occupy.
Imagine gas in a box. Over time, the gas particles will spread
out and fill every part of the box. This work was crucial for predicting the
long-term behavior of physical systems. While working away at the IAS, his
mind wandered as he was preoccupied with the looming war back home.
He wrote to Hungarian physicist Rudolf Ortvay in 1935, “There will be
a war in Europe in the next decade.” He was also correct when he
predicted that America would enter the war if Great Britain were in trouble. He feared that European Jews
would suffer a genocide similar to the Armenians under the Ottoman Empire.
Johnny lobbied for America's involvement, writing to a congressman in September 1941,
“The present war against Hitlerism is not a foreign war, since the principles for which it is
being fought are common to all civilized mankind.” Between his preoccupation with
his work and the inevitable war, Johnny wasn’t an attentive husband or father.
His daughter Marina reflected in her memoirs: “Although he genuinely adored my mother, my
father’s first love in life was thinking, a pursuit that occupied most of his waking hours,
and, like many geniuses, he tended to be oblivious to the emotional needs of those around him.”
He was surprised when his wife left him. A year after their divorce, he married Klára Dán, or Klari, in 1938, after meeting her
at a casino in Monte Carlo earlier. She was also from a wealthy Jewish Budapest
family and had left her husband for Johnny. They threw wild parties at their home every
week, and Johnny, with his remarkable memory, amassed a vast collection of
jokes to entertain their guests. At the start of the war, Johnny
researched explosives and ballistics, determining how their shape
affected their force and direction. His expertise led him to
something far more catastrophic. In December 1938, German scientists
discovered that uranium could be split. Physicist Enrico Fermi, who had fled
fascist Italy, understood the significance, declaring: “A little bomb like
that and it would all disappear.” Robert Oppenheimer, then at
the University of California, Berkeley, led the secretive American
effort to beat Germany to the bomb. Johnny played a key role in the Manhattan
Project by perfecting the implosion device. He improved the arrangement
of explosives for the “Fat Man” bomb by suggesting wedge-shaped
charges around the plutonium core. When detonated simultaneously, these
charges produced focused jets of energy, compressing the core more rapidly and
uniformly than conventional explosives. The implosion had to be so symmetrical
that it was compared to crushing a beer can without splattering any beer. Achieving this symmetry resulted
in a powerful nuclear explosion. By the time the atomic bomb was fully
developed and tested in July 1945, Germany had already surrendered. The war in Europe was over. But Japan refused to yield. Johnny had no qualms about bombing
Japan as he feared the threat of Stalin’s Soviet Union and wanted
America to send a strong message. He was part of the team that shortlisted
the Japanese cities to drop bombs on. Despite his willingness to use the bomb, he was fully aware of the devastating
power he had helped to create. “What we are creating now is a monster
whose influence is going to change history, provided there is any history left, yet it
would be impossible not to see it through, not only for the military reasons, but it
would also be unethical from the point of view of the scientists not to do what they
know is feasible, no matter what terrible consequences it may have. And this is only the
beginning! The energy source which is now being made available will make scientists the most hated
and also the most wanted citizens of any country.” On August 6, 1945, the U.S. dropped the "Little
Boy” bomb on Hiroshima, killing 78,000 people instantly, with tens of thousands more dying
later from radiation poisoning and burns. Three days later, American forces dropped
the second bomb, "Fat Man," on Nagasaki. It used the implosion mechanism
Johnny had developed, resulting in the deaths of 70,000 people.
Japan surrendered unconditionally. Toward the end of the war, engineers
at the University of Pennsylvania began working on a revolutionary
machine known as the ENIAC. Initially designed to calculate artillery
firing tables, ENIAC’s first task was determining whether it was possible to build a
more powerful bomb. Referring to hydrogen bomb John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert created
the world’s first programmable electronic computer for the U.S. Army's Ballistic Research
Laboratory. Moore School of Electrical Engineering ENIAC, which took up an entire room, could
perform more than 300 multiplications per second, which was thousands of times
faster than its predecessors. Johnny joined the project as a consultant.
But he wasn’t satisfied with a machine that could merely calculate.
He envisioned computers that could store information and instructions
in their memory, whereas the ENIAC required manual reconfiguration for each new task.
Johnny played a key role in developing the ENIAC’s successor, the EDVAC, which introduced
the concept of a stored-program computer. This design allowed data and instructions to be
stored in memory and manipulated by the machine, a foundational concept of
modern computing technology. The dissemination of Johnny’s 1945
report spread these revolutionary ideas. However, Eckert and Mauchly were furious that
the report bearing only John von Neumann’s name had been shared before they could
patent their digital computing device. Mathematician Herman Goldstine distributed
the report to dozens of scientists and engineers to further the development of
high-speed computers, as Johnny intended. Johny explained that “...this was perfectly proper
and in the best interests of the United States.” His ideas from EDVAC guided the design of the
IAS machine at the Institute for Advanced Study. IBM's first commercially successful
electronic computer, the IBM 701, was based on Johny’s stored-program architecture. Leading a bitter Eckert to complain: “He sold
all our ideas through the back door to IBM.” In a landmark verdict on October 19, 1973,
a judge ruled that the basic concepts of the electronic digital computer were in the
public domain and could not be patented. So, one of the most valuable inventions of
the 20th century was declared public property, a significant step towards what would
become the open-source movement. As if his schedule weren’t full enough, Johnny
also developed game theory during the war years, desiring to find neat mathematical
solutions to real-world problems at a tumultuous time in history.
He explained to mathematician Jacob Bronowski during a London cab ride that
game theory was different from chess: “Chess is not a game. Chess is a well-defined
form of computation.Real life is not like that. Real life consists of bluffing,
of little tactics of deception, of asking yourself what is the other
man going to think I mean to do. And that is what games are about in my theory.” as
recounted in Bronowski’s “The Ascent of Man” Game theory encompasses various models, each
addressing different decision-making scenarios. A classic example related to fair
division is the cake-cutting problem. If two people share a cake, what’s the
best way to ensure it’s divided fairly? One person cuts it, and the
other chooses the first piece, ensuring a fair division since the cutter
will aim to make both pieces equal. Another example is the zero-sum
game known as “matching pennies.” In this game, each player has a penny and
must secretly turn it to heads or tails, then reveal their choices simultaneously. If the pennies match, one player
wins and keeps both pennies. If they don't match, the other player wins. This game illustrates that one player’s gain is exactly the other’s loss,
making it a zero-sum game. Johnny viewed the Cold War between the U.S. and
the U.S.S.R. as two players in a zero-sum game. He supported the development of the hydrogen bomb, which was exponentially more
powerful than the atomic bomb. Initially, he was a proponent of “preventive war”
and recommended the U.S. launch a nuclear strike at Moscow, knowing it was only a matter of time
before the Soviet Union became a nuclear power. Confident that the Russian spy network had
obtained details of the atomic bomb design, he was convinced that war with
the Soviet Union was inevitable. He recognized the urgency of the situation and
remarked: “If you say why not bomb them tomorrow, I say why not today? If you say today at
5 o'clock, I say why not one o'clock?” However, he abandoned his idea of a pre-emptive
strike once the Soviet Union had enough bombs to retaliate, leading to the doctrine
of mutually assured destruction (MAD). Deterrence is the art of producing in
the mind of the enemy the fear to attack. He is said to have inspired the character
Dr. Strangelove in Stanley Kubrick’s film, “How I Learned to Stop
Worrying and Love the Bomb”. He used game theory to model
the Cold War interaction, helping military strategists consider when they
should and should not push the nuclear button. Ironically, Johnny defended Oppenheimer during
secret hearings to determine whether he posed a security risk due to his close ties
to those with Communist affiliations. Meanwhile, Johnny had pushed for a pre-emptive
strike against the Communist Soviet Union. While Johnny’s mind was racing,
his health was breaking down. Bone cancer metastasized through his body. It’s been suggested that the disease resulted
from his radiation exposure when he witnessed the hydrogen bomb tests conducted in
the Marshall Islands. Bikini Atoll Although Johnny believed that mathematicians
typically did their best work by the age of 26, he produced some of his most unique
contributions after his health declined. In his later years, he became fascinated by
the concept of self-replicating machines. He theorized about machines
that could reproduce themselves, with information copied and passed to
offspring separately from the machine itself – a vision that anticipated the
discovery of DNA's structure in 1953. His theories have profoundly
influenced artificial intelligence, inspiring the development of systems that
self-improve through training on data, as seen in machine learning
algorithms and neural networks. John von Neumann’s ideas were far ahead of
his time, but sadly, his life was cut short. He passed away on February
8, 1957, at the age of 53. Despite being agnostic all his life, on
his deathbed, he converted to Catholicism. In a 1950s article for Fortune magazine,
Johnny questioned the future of technology, recognizing its potential for good and evil.
He wrote, "The problems of the future of humanity cannot be resolved by a single prescription,
but only in reliance on day-to-day opportunistic measures, and reliance on the human qualities
required: patience, flexibility, intelligence.” Despite his many contributions to math
and science, John von Neumann was acutely aware of the gaps in education that
could hinder future advancements. He once addressed a young man's question
about whether America was educating enough people to operate advanced machines.
Is there enough people to do it? I’m glad that you’re asking this question
because it’s really a very good one. No, we don’t take enough people, and we better do
something about it. And I hesitate to say that we better do something about it quickly, but
rather, we’d better do something about it both quickly and then continuously. In other words,
we need more training in science on all levels, in college, in the high schools, and
more training of high school teachers. Well, one great way to learn STEM and
bridge this gap is through Brilliant. Brilliant is an amazing platform
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one, using their built-in drag-and-drop editor. There’s something for everyone no
matter your area of interest in STEM. Brilliant is FREE for you to try out for 30 days. Just scan my custom QR code on your screen or click my custom link in the video
description: brilliant.org/newsthink If you sign up with my code or link, you’ll
receive a 20% discount on Brilliant’s annual Premium subscription, which gives you access
to all of their interactive offerings. Thanks for watching. For Newsthink, I’m Cindy Pom.