A (very) Brief History of John von Neumann
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- čas přidán 13. 05. 2024
- In this episode, we cover the history of the 20th century Hungarian-American John von Neumann, one of the most pivotal figures of the 20th century, especially notable for his contributions to the creation of the atom bomb.
Sources: docs.google.com/document/d/1J...
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I've never heard as many scientists saying they cant keep up with someone else as with Neumann, his mind must have been immensily powerful. Thanks for the video!
Yeah. But can he cook an egg?
@@djbabbotstown Well, he couldn't drive well :D
What i would never get is the great fear of death. I mean lots of people less intelligent have consolidated with their faith more easily and more readily. They say that only when you live fully you are ready to die at any moment. So the conclusion of this video does not make sense. How can one that is living so fully be so afraid of what is apparent? I think von Neumann was not living fully but merely biding time and trying to get as much out before the inevitable.
There is a simple joke about this in my native (dutch) language it goes something like this. A guy walks into a bar and nervously asks for a beer quickly before the trouble starts, so the bartender gives him a beer. After a few minutes the guy asks for another beer ‘before the trouble starts’. The bartender gives him a beer. A few moments pass before the guy again asks for a beer ‘before the trouble starts’. The bartender finally fed up with this asks ‘how are you going to pay for this?’ to which the guy replies ‘there’s the trouble’.
Never heard of Terrance Tao then.
Great scientists never admit if the other guy is smarter except they admit Von Neumann is. Because it would be utterly ridiculous to deny it.
*When he was six years old, he could divide two eight-digit numbers in his head and could converse in Ancient Greek. When the six-year-old von Neumann caught his mother staring aimlessly, he asked her, "What are you calculating?"* - Wikipedia
Just historys… no proof. Tesla spoke 67 languages fluently by age 2. Oh… I dont have a video to prove that either.
@@jaassil at least we know what he done after. and what did you do?
@@viktorjuhasz1518 ypocrisy fallacy dum dum
When I was six, I could finish my entire Ice Cream cone.
Also, his Ph.D dissertation was so complex that his examiners kindly asked that he re-write the thesis to a more understandable level for their understanding; his examiners were all Ph.D mathematics professors and they did not defy or question his paper, how could they since he was brighter than all of his professors. The remarkable thing about genius is that your teachers have little or nothing to 'teach' to you that you cannot just as easily discover or learn for yourself, all they can do is to provide some guidance and direction of further study. Scary intelligent. AI might easily achieve such a status shortly.
He probably was the smartest human on earth, this needs more views.
@OverLord Opps In terms of IQ tests or cognitive ability tests he probably wouldve had aall time record . Nowadays asians have this capabilities.
@@stevo7220 I m asian , u guys overestimate us , dumb guys exist here too alot of them
Dude wtf??
He was.
@Noah dean In terms of mathematical and scientific work I would say he was on of the greatest. William Sidis didn't do anything usefull. He's suppose to be remembered as an American mathematician but didn't do anything significant mathematical or scientifically. I think it's unfair to treat intelligence as a game were you get the highest score, I think intelligence has to be useful for it to be really shown. Von Neumann had the mathematical depth of Euler, and was also a good engineer and physicist (Something Euler was not). His work on qauntum mechanics was on level with Dirac, and Dirac was one of the best mathematical minds to study qauntum mechanics. You can argue non of his work was a deep as the theory of special relativity (which is fair), but special relativity is a really deep concept that would take years to study even for a genius. Neumann definitely covered a lot of ground on a lot of deep concept. The Volume of his work is why I think he's the greatest.
As an Economist I feel obliged to mention his fundamental paper on economic equilibrium and growth first published in German in 1938 and originally presented to a famous Seminar in Vienna. 8 years later the paper was published in English. This contribution was a brilliant door opener for what was to come later in theoretical economics after WWII. For the first time it used mathematical fix point theorems ( vN generalized Brouwer, later further generalized by Kakutani) to solve a set of linear economic inequalities. The paper cannot be overestimated, imho.
I thought John nash had something to do with that as well?
@@thoughtsofalostoneofalosto2591 it seems they both did contribute significantly to game theory
@@thoughtsofalostoneofalosto2591
John Nash was not on the same level of von Neumann, this despite the hype of the movie 'A Beautiful Mind'. Von Neumann was far more fascinating of a chap, very modest in behavior and of his genius too. John Nash was 'nominated' for his Nobel Prize years after his best years were over and he was almost like a street urchin due to his mental instability. Von Neumann was a mathematician and thus there is awarded Nobel Prize for either pure mathematics, yet there can be a Nobel Prize in another field to which mathematics can be applied and for which prize category exists under the Nobel Committee rules. Many critics also contend that the term 'Nobel Prize in Economics' is not valid since Mr Nobel never authorized economics as a category for which the prize should be awarded, rather any economics category award is predicated and created by the Swedish Sovereign Bank IN MEMORY OF Alfred Nobel, but not made by Alfred Nobel in his original intention of the prize. Trivia folks, just trivia.
You are not an economist. Thank you.
Economics is a psuedo-science.
The most underrated scientist of all time.
His papers and achievements rates him pretty accurately
and Einstein with 1 theory, and 160 IQ is soooo famous
@@hunmari Einstein with ONE theory???
For once, underrated actually is underrated, at least in terms of popular culture.
@@hunmari You do know Einstein basically invented condensed matter physics, right? And most people don't realize this.
That was ONE of like 100 things he did. According to head of applied physics at Yale, who knows more physics than 10 clones of you put together, Douglas Stone, Einstein should have gotten 7 to 10 Nobel Prizes.
Yeah "1 theory," you are very ignorant.
What an interesting dude with such a wide range of knowledge. It's the kind of character that would actually break immersion if a book or movie made the main character this brilliant.
His brilliance was such that even sane - and immensely intelligent people - contemplated whether he might have been an alien.
I first heard of von Neumann when related to computer architecture. I was therefore a little surprised when no mention was made of his contribution to computer architecture.
People are ignorant of his genius. As an aside, when computer programmers like Grace Hopper showed him the newer emerging forms of computer instruction languages being developed, he was very unimpressed because he thought that the underlying assembly language was sufficient enough in his mind to do the computer tasks without adding another layer of language atop that of assembly language. Such was his genius, the rest of us, however, need such advanced computer languages to write code more efficiently. Only in science fiction Star Trek's Mr. Data and Mr. Spock are von Neumann's math skills equaled.
Was awaiting a video on this man. Excellent work my friend! Never failing to impress.
I started reading "The Three Body Problem" and came across his character and role in the book. I was not familiar with who he was prior to that point in the book.. but I'm glad you were here to explain his life.. even if it was brief. :D
May you explain what this book is about for three body problem
@@Apocalypsepioneer - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Three-Body_Problem_(novel),
It is worth reading the book. The story line is fascinating.
I love your videos, you pronounce everything so perfectly. Absolute gem of a channel:D
Great video, thank you. You included info id never read or heard about him.
Subscribed!
He is my Hero..an unrivaled Genius..I particularly admire his work with Ulam to realize the functionality of the Bomb and also with Chandrasekhar (stochastic fluctuations in stellar theory). He did all of this effortlessly..Wigner's epitaph to him was conclusive..to paraphrase.."There was only one Genius. JVN.."
brilliant work, props!
As a Hungarian physicist myself too, I highly appreciate the scientific achievements of JVN, Wigner, Szilárd, and Teller as one of the 8,000-meter peaks of human intelligence. But at the same time, we must also see that if the Earth ever becomes uninhabitable due to human activity, then we can thank it our greatest physicists (also for the peaceful mathematicians or other outstanding scientists, ) in the first place. Not because of their performance, - sithence they gave their best -, but because they were so naive that they didn't know what should or shouldn't be handed over to the ruling classes of humanity and what not. They make the same mistake as a father who puts a machine gun in the hands of his son, hoping that he will use it only to deter predators. Human intelligence is as much a curse as a blessing. Today, it is technically possible to wipe out all of humanity within 1 day.
Thanks from Hungary. Köszönet Magyarországról!
Excellent work. I enjoyed it very much!!
My favorite part of this was that he was reading while driving lol. Shows his dedications. Amazing work covering his life, super educational and well put together!
Just a precursor to driving whilst texting lol
@@jjvs9 Reject modernity
read very interesting book back in the 80's called "John Von Neumann and Norbert Wiener: From Mathematics to the Technologies of Life and Death" . It went out of print years ago but it detailed a lot of his personal life and character and how it differed from Wiener's.
I will Google this book. Thank you.
Undoubtedly von Neumann's greatest idea was the Stored-Program Concept, a concept that recognized computer instructions as data. Previously, computers were programmed by rewiring them, a task that was quite tedious and error prone, taking hours if not days to complete.
what it greater than his other ideas?
Wow, I had no idea that von Neumann was such a great mathematician. Thank you for this video!
None better to date anyway. Imagine being able to do math that quickly and well, he was no mere 'Rain Man' character either, since von Neumann could create mathematical dogma that never previously existed and his genius leapt across varoius fields, not merely mathematics.
@@edmundcharles5278Would say Euler or Gauss may be just a tad bit higher up the rung of legendary mathematicians.
dude these videos are great !!!!
Thank you for sharing this video.
10:13. "A point in a complex Hilbert space, which can be infinite dimensional even for a single particle." Nice.
Excellent video, thank you so very much!
It's kind of ironic that, after his huge contributions to modern computing, we now prefer one type of non-von Neumann processor organization (separate data and instruction memories). But, he's the man(n)! ☺️ Although, Gauss was pretty damn impressive too (he proved the closed-form solution for the sum of the first n integers at age five...).
Who was greater Euler or Gauss? I'd go Euler, but it's close.
And what about LaGrange vs Gauss? Lagrange was a freak of nature too.
@@feynmanschwingere_mc2270 A shame Galois died so young.
He was a multi-talented marvel.
John von Neumann was also one of John Nash's teachers - the famous mathematician, whose biography is entitled 'A Beautiful Mind.
von Neumann also did the hydrodynamic calculations for the spherical symmetrical compression of the first plutonium bomb dropped on Nagasaki.
@moderndaymath I have really enjoyed watching your brief history of various mathematicians. For anyone particularly interested in John von Neumann b.t.w I highly recommend for further viewing: "The Inside Story Of The Math Genius Of The 20th Century" (on youtube) which I just found. Despite it's title, it's almost entirely about John von Neumann and includes some TV footage of the man himself.
Can you imagine being a student in his class? Very intimidating, since any question that you asked with likely be followed by a long explanation relating to the correct answer and any associated data relating to the answer.
He attended a school that gave 6 or 8 Nobel prize winners. I don't tjink that was an issue. Btw Jancsi was a fun person, the heart of the party, he loved to make people laugh, hr used his immense knowledge to make people laugh. Just look at his broad smile, you can tell it's true.
He was truly amazing!
Thanks for the video, I appreciate it.
What's your personal background? I have occasionally talked about biographies of mathematicians on youtube, e.g. two videos about van der Waerden. In case you don't know, Halmos (which you mentioned as one of the Marsians) has a cute autobiography, as well as a photobook showing hundreds of his photographs from mathematicians at conferences over the decade.
I studied mathematics in undergrad and tutored. I studied statistics for my masters and taught + tutored. I also started working in Data Science 3+ years ago.
There's so many great mathematicians, it seems I'll never stop having content to create! If I end up digging into Halmos later on, I'll def check out that autobiography. Thank you for the note :D
@@moderndaymath Ettore Majorana could be an interesting one.
@@NikolajKuntner Oh wow I didn't realize he worked with Fermi! Added him to the backlog :)
According to Al Bielek, Von Neumann was involved in 'Project Invisibility' aka "The Philadelphia Experiment ' during WW2 which sought to make ships invisible to radar by RF electro magnetism
Never miss it.
Amazing
Brilliant man..
7:10 "difficult time following his explanation - largely cuz he was a speed demon" - the story goes that he would write his proofs on the board and quickly erase them - which his student's called "proof by erasure"
One of the last true Polymaths.
Excellent biography. A few minor problems with narration: "him" used instead of "he" at least twice, Goethe pronounced Gold.
As soon as your ego starts to rise.... Look what he did, then what you are doing. Ego = dropped
Bravo. Recently read a biography of JvN (by Norman Macrae).
tyty, great articulation
Excellent
What an illustrious career anybody would be proud of.
It was wonderful to hear such extensive background on Johnny Von Neumann. I've read and heard so many bits and pieces about him over the years but had not gotten around to reading a full biography. Thanks for this excellent piece of work. But please, you must correct your use of he word "him" when you should be using the word "he"...I kept cringing on and off all the way through, even though I understand that it is the speaking style in some regions of the U.S. But despite this grammatical error, I still enjoyed your very comprehensive and well written video. Thank you very much and please excuse my quibbling over the grammar.
Organized and thorough, as it should be, being largely a paraphrased version of the wikipedia page with added illustrations.
Could it be that the wiki article is an expanded version of the video?
If I had 100,000 years I wouldn't even come close to what this guy has achieved in his lifetime.
100.000 years is a lot… are u dumb?
^ The point of his comment is that we are all dumb compared to him
CZcams says this comment has 2 replies. I click to see the replies and there are none. Why?
@Leonhard Euler how many replies do you see here including this one?
@@TheCorrectionist1984 i see 5
I love the music
3:32 Hey, my dad worked with Gabor Szego's son, Peter Szego, at Ampex Corporation, I suppose in the 1960s or so, where they were engineers.
My mere mortal mind is hopelessly spinning just watching this video!
A new biography is coming out in February. It promises to be quite good.
Great review of a genius’ life 👍
really good video!!! what a great human being, and imagine what more he could have done with a full lifetime!!!
A human with a mind as deep as Einstein's and as quick as Neumann's would push humanity decades into the future
just that combination is a paradox
@@corvanha1 how?
@@asbayt81 Firstly a deep mind is no calculator, but a visionary mind, secondly a deep mind experiences a singularity of being without being separated from unity by divisions or pondering on opposites. And thirdly the outcome of the deep mind's thoughts are allencompassing and unifying. The quick mind- though a sign of genius on its own merits- does not comprehend by unifying but by seperating through extremely intricate equasions and by calculating its effects on a given premise, a particle, an isolated phenomenon, a series of related effects, i.e. by presuming those calculations will eventually be met by the propostion or even a revelation of a third unknown, which cannot be grasped with speed of thinking but only by meditating deeply upon its given presence, its absolute immanence, which is elusive to the mere calculator. Therefore quick minds always depend on the first grasp of understanding without being able to penetrate the underlying higher principle, which is unified and indivisible. Quick minds tend to ponder on the effects rather than the origins, their obsession prevent them to encompass the silence of the unknown, inwhich the absolute solution is embedded, but which cannot be extracted by mere calculations. The quick mind is capable however to step up to a higher principle altogether by transcending its inner motive of conquest through learning to listen to the inner voice in himself, which in the ends gives a clue to the endeavour to attempt a journey to the unknown within himself thereby dissoluting the inner conflict to become closer to his inner being, in which no opposite force exists (in the deepest sence, not in the present reality though), thus putting the equation (the output of calculation) in the service of unity of heart and mind. I do not hope my thoughts are an offence to you. Thank you.
@@corvanha1 💯
By the time we get technology, it is already 50 years old. They already have the advanced technology; they just will not release it to the public. The things we have today, Tesla did 100 years ago.
All in the service of maintaining the status quo of the Petro-dollar.
Economists at War presents a tableau of his works and passions
If I were to rate someone with the highest IQ ever, of all time, it would probably be John von Neumann.
Listening to this video an image of Goethe started to appear in my head.
Wide range of knoweldge accumulated in such a short period of time is just absurd. This man was a genious. Aha!
Thats what happens when you follow the path of mastery.
Learning principles must be applied and constant need for learning must be present.
You sell your soul for knowledge. But being great mathmatician he concluded "it's logical to be a believer".
Go back to the video.
Now, at the end of JVN's life as he's closer to the end, he's reciting lines from Goethe's Faust. Wtf man
I read details of neumann, his work related to computer and his tragic death. I ask for a gentle man that recommend me a book to read his history in one whole pack. Thanks for the attention
Turing's Cathedral
Fearing death is real pain.
Thanks
good video!
When a someone asked Chuck Norris to calculate his power, Chuck's answer was "Talk to John von Neumann".
Einstein said he was the smartest man he ever met.
What a chad! He certainly would have made Hungary great again.
MHGA? Well, in the present situation, Hungary could well do with some improvements to its global image.
I think there are two errors at 11:20. First, the Uncertainty Principle doesn't much benefit from an operator solution (nonabelian operators). It is the same tradeoff between the precision of position and velocity that we also see in the tradeoff between the precision of amplitude and frequency in a Fourier analysis. The reason is that velocity is not independent of position--in fact its definition is the derivative of position, similar to the inverse relationship between amplitude and frequency.
The second is the claim that quantum mechanics must be nondeterministic--there is no such proof. It is not required in quantum mechanics at all. It is an axiom of the Copenhagen interpretation and is contradicted by the Bohm interpretation, which has an experimental verification of its prediction of deterministic paths.
The appearance of probabilities in QM experiments is mostly due to the very real random errors in the equipment used, such as random initial positions for the photons generated by a laser.
Also, nonlocality is not inconsistent with special relativity. Causality in inertial frames of reference holds just fine with nonlocal forces. Of course, human perceptions cannot possibly reveal nonlocality directly, since in most natural cases we cannot perceive pure quantum states or the behavior of individual atoms.
Well said....
So von Neumann was bald and always apologizing, which suggests to me that he was a brilliant George Costanza.
Excellent work. The background music was too loud and distracting
It's how Neumann would have wanted it
Imagine if he lived into his 80's
A little correction at 6:30 -by the end of 1927 von Neumann had only published 4 mathematics papers not 12, and by 1929 he had published 5, not 32
What is the music in the background
We hear of famous people like Turin etc but little of guys like Neumann.
can you tell me th name of music in background it seems like a piano concerto
Instead of making a movie on John Forbes Nash (Ala 'A Beautiful Mind' movie), a move on Johnny von Neumann instead should have been made- much more fascinating and prolific!
Neumann has been robbed off of his achievements many times by hollywood. As if they didn't care about the body of work this genius created.
I thoroughly enjoyed this well produced and informative biography. Thank you! BUT ... PLEASE learn the correct usage of the words, "HE" and "HIM"!
The first half of the 20th century had a remarkable concentration of geniuses. Something never seen before.
Today the number of people (both females and males) involved in science and maths is surely far higher, but I'm wondering if we have less off-scale minds than a century ago.
Statistically we should have more, but the complexity of what our grandfathers achieved (or contributed to) is so great is probably making harder to young minds to get genius-level results: today the main outcomes are made by teams of people maybe.
I had a similar thought. A huge amount of people try to make a living in science, basically producing theories to publish, which is the bases if their titles and income. This creates sensationalism and chaotic narratives.
Smartest person ever lived. Last polymath ...
The greatest brain in the 20th century.
I am here for knowing him well enough to include his sign inside my book which related to biography.
Could u pls include two major contributions of Neumann's in both maths and stat... Wanna give my presentation...
Great job pronouncing Hungarian names!
You made an error at 12:47 - you meant to say '...to initiate nuclear fusion' [not fission]
What's the music?
So strange I had never heard of this man. We do not celebrate the geniuses of our world enough! These Hungarians had it on the ball it seems.
Most people don't appreciate what they don't understand. That is one reason why singers, movie stars, and other entertainers get much more recognition than (scientific) geniuses.
Hungary's unfortunate 20th century political affiliations have resulted in a kind of 'banishment to the dogbox'. One main outcome of that was that some other European nations and the US have done their best to negate or cover-up the contributions of Hungarian intellectuals. It did not suit THEIR political agendas. Sad.
NUCLEUS
And there was I thinking I did well in gaining two GCE's .
What is the music in the background? Rachmaninoff?
or was it Budweiser?
@@michaelbarry8373 Edward Künneke.
I just wish these were narration only
The background music (though lovely in its own right) distracts me from the story
von Neumann, Pauli & Fermi all died relatively young.
And Turing.
Guy has a pog hairline
I wonder if he shared the same opinions on war and violence he had in the prime of his life as he did when actually facing his own mortality. I would wager no.
He didn't.
"Of this deathbed conversion, Morgenstern told Heims, "He was of course completely agnostic all his life, and then he suddenly turned Catholic-it doesn't agree with anything whatsoever in his attitude, outlook and thinking when he was healthy." Father Strittmatter recalled that even after his conversion, von Neumann did not receive much peace or comfort from it, as he still remained terrified of death."
@@DoddoJordan Regardless of one's lifelong attitude toward the existence of Deity, most of us would be terrified of impending death. This is totally understandable. However, it is amazing that so many dying people instinctively turn toward seeking solace from that Deity, regardless of the veracity of its existence.
C02-lead warming has been known since 1955 by him, the 60s by the Pentagon more broadly and the '80s at latest by the internal research of energy companies. I struggle to square this with the way climate change is presented in the past couple of decades - both the erroneous, unfair liability attributed to individuals and the focus on C02 to the exlusion of other factors... and it's also a good illustration of the difference between what governments and firms will tell publicly vs what they in fact know.
was he in the Oppenheimer movie?
Shockingly no
Nice video 👍🏼
great guy my idol😊
Great synopsis! Please learn how to say his name. His real name is János, not John. "Von" is pronounced as "Fon". Thank you!
A slight grammatcal mistake ‘him’ used several times when ‘he’ is correct, e.g. ‘him and Fuchs…’
wonderful video, it would be great however if you ran your Hungarian name pronunciations by a Hungarian individual
How interesting that a man with such powerful mind and such a willingness to inflict death upon others (at the scale of nuclear massacre), was so weak and afraid when confronted by his own inevitable end.
One might venture to say that “reality” was teaching him something very profound through his premature demise.
Ummm. There was a world war in full swing. You can read about it in a book.
We are all weak, when confronting our Final Exit. Very few people die singing limericks or telling jokes...
A great video that will create vocations. The Faust who cared about studying everything did not care about mathematics. Goethe compared mathematics to a Frenchman and to that quintessentially French literary rhetoric, which indicates that Goethe did not appreciate the fundamental importance of mathematics, but then people like Leibniz, Euler or Neumann came along and gave birth to a new world.
Leibnitz and Euler pre-dated Goethe
He makes 99.99999% of the Earth's Population seem dimwitted....including the people we usually call "Smart"!
A few more points after decimal place?
@@sdlillystone Maybe infinitely more perhaps??
Yeah, a big gap between smart and super genius.
@@linoserrano476 Yup! His mind was in another Realm!
Certain people should live 200 years, other ones shouldn't even born...
I'm a big fan of his works, but if we're being realistic here, he contributed to a lot of deaths aswell. brilliant but flawed in many ways too
@@arma5166 Not by intent or by design.