Iliastef

Το «Von Neumann» ανακατευθύνει εδώ. Για άλλες χρήσεις, δείτε: Von Neumann (αποσαφήνιση).

{{eastern name order|Neumann János Lajos}} {{Infobox scientist |name = John von Neumann |image = JohnvonNeumann-LosAlamos.gif |image_size = 220px |caption = Von Neumann in the 1940s |birth_name = Neumann János Lajos |birth_date = {{birth date|mf=yes|1903|12|28}} |birth_place = [[Budapest]], [[Austria-Hungary]] |death_date = {{death date and age|mf=yes|1957|2|8|1903|12|28}} |death_place = [[Walter Reed General Hospital]]<br>[[Washington, D.C.]] |residence = United States |citizenship = |occupation = Physicist, mathematician, inventor |nationality = Hungarian and American |fields = [[Mathematics]], [[physics]], [[statistics]], [[economics]] |workplaces = [[University of Berlin]]<br />[[Princeton University]]<br />[[Institute for Advanced Study]]<br />[[Los Alamos National Laboratory|Site Y, Los Alamos]] |alma_mater = [[Eötvös Loránd University|University of Pázmány Péter]]<br />[[ETH Zürich]] |doctoral_advisor = [[Lipót Fejér]] |academic_advisors = [[László Rátz]] |doctoral_students = [[Donald B. Gillies]]<br />[[Israel Halperin]] |notable_students = [[Paul Halmos]]<br>[[Clifford Hugh Dowker]] |known_for = {{collapsible list|title={{nbsp}}|[[Abelian von Neumann algebra]]<br>[[Affiliated operator]]<br>[[Amenable group]]<br>[[Arithmetic logic unit]]<br>[[viscosity|Artificial viscosity]] (a numerical technique for simulating shock waves)<br>[[Axiom of regularity]]<br>[[Axiom of limitation of size]]<br>[[Backward induction]]<br>[[Blast wave|Blast wave (fluid dynamics)]]<br>[[Bounded set (topological vector space)]]<br>[[Carry-save adder]]<br>[[Class (set theory)]]<br>[[Quantum decoherence|Decoherence theory (Quantum mechanics)]]<br>[[Computer virus]]<br>[[Commutation theorem]]<br>[[Continuous geometry]]<br>[[Direct integral]]<br>[[Doubly stochastic matrix]]<br>[[Dual problem|Duality Theorem]]<br>[[Density matrix]]<br>[[Durbin–Watson statistic]]<br>[[Game theory]]<br>[[Hilbert's fifth problem]]<br>[[Hyperfinite type II factor]]<br>[[Ergodic theory]]<br>[[EDVAC]]<br>[[nuclear weapon design|explosive lenses]]<br>[[Lattice (order)|Lattice theory]]<br>[[Lifting theory]]<br>[[Inner model]]<br>[[Inner model theory]]<br>[[Interior point method]]<br>[[Mutual assured destruction]]<br>[[Merge sort]]<br>[[Middle-square method]]<br>[[Minimax|Minimax theorem]]<br> [[Monte Carlo method]]<br>[[Normal-form game]]<br>[[Pointless topology]]<br>[[Polarization identity]]<br>[[Pseudorandomness]]<br>[[Pseudorandom number generator|PRNG]]<br>[[Quantum mutual information]]<br>[[Radiation implosion]]<br>[[Rank ring]]<br>[[Operator theory]]<br>[[Operation Greenhouse]]<br>[[Self-replication]]<br>[[Software whitening]]<br>[[Standard probability space]]<br>[[Stochastic computing]]<br>[[Subfactor]]<br>[[von Neumann algebra]]<br>[[von Neumann architecture]]<br>[[Von Neumann bicommutant theorem]]<br>[[Von Neumann cardinal assignment]]<br>[[Von Neumann cellular automaton]]<br>von Neumann constant (two of them)<br>[[Interpretation of quantum mechanics#von Neumann/Wigner interpretation: consciousness causes the collapse|Von Neumann interpretation]]<br>[[Measurement in quantum mechanics#von Neumann measurement scheme|von Neumann measurement scheme]]<br>[[Von Neumann ordinal|Von Neumann Ordinals]]<br>[[Von Neumann universal constructor]]<br>[[Von Neumann entropy]]<br>[[von Neumann Equation]]<br>[[Von Neumann neighborhood]]<br>[[Von Neumann paradox]]<br>[[Von Neumann regular ring]]<br>{{nowrap|[[Von Neumann–Bernays–Gödel set theory]]}}<br>[[Spectral theory|Von Neumann spectral theory]]<br>[[Von Neumann universe]]<br>[[Von Neumann conjecture]]<br>[[Von Neumann's inequality]]<br>[[Stone–von Neumann theorem]]<br>[[Von Neumann's trace inequality]]<br>[[Von Neumann stability analysis]]<br>[[Quantum statistical mechanics]]<br>[[Von Neumann extractor]]<br>[[Mean ergodic theorem|Von Neumann ergodic theorem]]<br>[[Ultrastrong topology]]<br>[[Von Neumann–Morgenstern utility theorem]]<br>[[ZND detonation model]]}} |author_abbrev_bot = |author_abbrev_zoo = |influences = |influenced = |awards = {{no wrap|[[Bôcher Memorial Prize]] {{small|(1938)}}<br> [[Enrico Fermi Award]] {{small|(1956)}}}} |signature = johnny von neumann sig.gif |footnotes = }} Ο Τζον Φον Nόιμαν (/vɒn ˈnɔɪmən/; 28 Δεκεμβρίου 1903 – 8 Φεβρουαρίου, 1957) γεννημένος στην Ουγγαρία ασχολήθηκε με τα Μαθηματικά, την Φυσική.Ήταν εφευρετικός και πολυμαθής.Έκανε σημαντικές συνεισφορές σε διάφορους τομείς, που σχετίζονταν με τα Μαθηματικά (θεμελίωση των Μαθηματικών,λειτουργική ανάλυση,τοπολογία,γεωμετρία,αριθμιτική ανάλυση και εργοδική θεωρία),την Φυσική (κβαντική μηχανική, υδροδυναμική και δυναμική των ρευστών),την Οικονομία (θεωρία των παιγνίων),τους Υπολογιστές (αρχιτεκτονική Von Neumann,γραμμικό προγραμματισμό,αυτοδιπλασιαζόμενες μηχανές, στοχαστική υπολογιστών),και την Στατιστική.Υπήρξε πρωτοπόρος της εφαρμογής της θεωρίας της κβαντομηχανικής,στην ανάπτυξη της λειτουργικής ανάλυσης,κύριο μέλος του Σχεδίου Μανχάτταν και του Ινστιτούτου Προηγμένων Μελετών στο Πρίνστον (ως ένα από τα λίγα μέλη που ορίστηκαν), και ένα βασικό κλειδί στην ανάπτυξη της θεωρίας των παιγνίων [1] [2], καθώς και των εννοιών του κυτταρικού αυτοματισμού [1] και του ψηφιακού υπολογιστή.

Η μαθηματική ανάλυση του Τζον Φον Νόιμαν της δομής της αυτο-αντιγραφής προηγήθηκε της ανακάλυψης της δομής του DNA. Περιληπτικά στην ζωή του μπήκε στην Εθνική Ακαδημία Επιστημών,και δήλωσε "To κομμάτι της δουλειάς μου που εξετάζω περισσότερο σχολαστικά είναι αυτό της κβαντοδυναμικής,που αναπτύχθηκε στο Γκέτινγκεν το 1926,και έπειτα στο Βερολίνο το διάστημα 1927–1929.Επίσης η δουλειά μου σε διάφορες μορφές πάνω στην operator theory,(Bερολίνο 1930 και Πρίνσετον 1935–1939) στην εργοδική θεωρία (Πρίνσετον 1931–1932)''.Μαζί με τον θεωριτικό Φυσικό Έντουαρντ Τέλλερ,Αμερικανός γεννημένος στην Ουγγαρία και τον Πολλωνό Μαθηματικό Στανισλάβ Ούλαμ, ο Φον Νόιμαν επεξεργάστηκε βασικά βήματα στον τομέα της πυρηνικής φυσικής που εμπλέκονται στις θερμοπυρηνικές αντιδράσεις και τις βόμβες υδρογόνου.

Ο Φον Νόιμαν έγραψε 150 δημοσιευμένα βιβλία στην ζωή του:60 πάνω στα Μαθηματικά,20 πάνω στην Φυσική,και 60 πάνω στα εφαρμοσμένα Μαθηματικά.Η τελευταία του δουλειά,ένα μισοτελειωμένο χειρόγραφο το οποίο γράφτηκε μέσα στο νοσοκομείο και δημοσιεύτηκε σε μορφή βιβλίου με τίτλο ''O Υπολογιστής και το Μυαλό'' (''The Computer and the Brain'') δίνει μια ένδειξη για την κατεύθυνση των συμφερόντων του κατά τον χρόνο του θανάτου του.

Προσωπική ζωή και Σπουδές

Ο Φον Νόιμαν γεννήθηκε με το όνομα Νόιμαν Γιάνος Λάγιος({{IPA-hu|ˈnojmɒn ˈjaːnoʃ ˈlɒjoʃ}}; στα Ούγγρικα το όνομα μπαίνει πρώτο) στην Βουδαπέστη,την περίοδο της Αυστρο-Ουγγρικής Αυτοκρατορίας,σε εύπορη ευραϊκή οικογένεια. Ήταν ο μεγαλύτερος από τους τρεις αδερφούς.Ο πατέρας του,Neuman Miksa(Μαξ Νόιμαν) ήταν τραπεζικός με διδακτορικό στην νομική.Μετακόμισε στην Βουδαπέστη από το Πεξ στα τέλη του 1880.Ο πατέρας του Miksa (Mihály 1839) και ο παππούς του (Márton) γεννηθηκαν στο Ond (τώρα πια περιοχή της πόλης Τσέρενς),στη Ζεπλέν,στην βόρεια Ουγγαρία.Η μητέρα του Νόιμαν λεγόταν Kann Margit (Margaret Kann).

Όι γονείς της ήταν ο Jakab Kann II (Πέστη(τώρα πια Βουδαπέστη) 1845–1928) και η Katalin Meisels (Munkács, Kárpátalja 1854–1914).Το 1913,ο πατέρας του εξηψώθηκε πνευματικά για την προσφορά του στην Αυστρο-Ουγγρική Αυτοκρατορία από τον Aυτοκράτορα Franz Josef.Έτσι η οικογένεια Νόιμαν απέκτησε τον τίτλο magrittai,και ο Γιάνος Νόιμαν μετονομάστηκε σε margittai Γιάνος Νόιμαν (Γιάνος Νόιμαν των Margitta),ο οποίος αργότερα άλλαξε το όνομά του στο γερμανικό Johann von Neumann.

Ήταν ένα παδιί θαύμα στους τομείς της γλώσσας,της απομνημόνευσης,της μνήμης και των μαθηματικών.Σαν 6χρονος μπορούσε να διαιρέσει με το μυαλό του 2 οκταψήφιους αριθούς.Από τα 8 του ήταν εξοικειωμένος με τον διαφορικό και τον αναπόσπαστο λογισμό.

Ο Φον Νόιμαν ήταν μέρος μιας γενιάς της Βουδαπέστης που φημιζόταν για την πνευματικότητα:γεννήθηκε στην Βουδαπέστη περίπου την ίδια περίοδο με τον Theodore von Kármán (b. 1881), George de Hevesy (b. 1885), Leó Szilárd (b. 1898), Eugene Wigner (b. 1902), Edward Teller (b. 1908), και τον Paul Erdős (b. 1913).

Ο Γιάνος μπήκε στο Γερμανόφωνο Λουθηρανικο γυμνάσιο Fasori Evangelikus Gimnázium στην Βουδαπέστη το 1911.Παρ'όλο που ο πατέρας του επέμενε πως φοιτεί σε ένα σχολείο υψηλότερου επιπέδου από αυτό της ηλικίας του,συμφώνησε να προσλάβει ιδιωτικούς εκπαιδευτικούς για να του προσφέρουν προηγμένες γνώσει στους τομείς που εμφάνιζε ικανότητα.Στην ηλικία των 15 ξεκίνησε να διαβάζει προηγμένο λογισμό στο πλαίσιο του φημισμένου αναλυτή Gábor Szegő.Στην πρώτη τους συνάντηση ο Szegő έμεινε έκπληκτος με το μαθηματικό ταλέντο του αγοριού,που δάκρυσε.

Ο Szegő έπειτα επισκεπτόταν το σπίτι του Φον Νόιμαν δύο φορές την βδομάδα για να κάνει μάθημα με το παιδί-θαύμα.Κάποιες από τις άμεσες λύσεις του Νόιμαν στα προβλήματα λογισμού που έθετε ο Szegő,γράφτηκαν σε χαρτιά του πατέρα του, και εξακολουθούν να βρίσκονται ακόμα στο αρχείο του Φον Νόιμαν στην Βουδαπέστη. Από την ηλικία των 19,ο Φον Νόιμαν δημοσίευσε δύο μείζοντα μαθηματικά θέματα,το δεύτερο από τα οποία έδωσε τον σύγχρονο ορισμό της διάταξης των αριθμών,και αντικατέστησε τον ορισμό του Georg Cantor.

Τελείωσε το διδακτορικό του στα μαθηματικά(with minors in experimental physics and chemistry) από το Pázmány Péter University στην Βουδαπέστη στην ηλικία των 22. Ταυτόχρονα πήρε ένα δίπλωμα στην μηχανική χημεία απο το ETH Zurich στην Ελβετία μετά από αίτημα του πατέρα του,που ήθελε ο γιος του να τον ακολουθήσει στη βιομηχανία και ως εκ τούτου, να επενδύσει το χρόνο του σε μια πιο οικονομικά χρήσιμη προσπάθεια από τα μαθηματικά.

Καριέρα και ικανότητες

Ξεκίνημα

Μεταξύ 1926 και 1930,δίδαξε ως λέκτορας στο Πανεπιστήμιο του Βερολίνου,και έγινε ο νεότερος στην ιστορία του Πανεπιστημίου. Στα τέλη του 1927,ο Φον Νόιμαν είχε δημοσιεύσει δώδεκα σημαντικά θέματα στα μαθηματικά,και στα τέλη του 1929,τριανταδύο θέματα,σε ρυθμό περίπου ενός θέματος τον μήνα. Η εξουσία των εικασιών του Νόιμαν of speedy, massive memorization and recall του επέτρεψαν να διηγείται όγκους πληροφοριών, ακόμα και ολόκληρους καταλόγους με μεγάλη ευκολία.

Το 1930,ο Νόιμαν προσκαλέσθηκε στο Πανεπιστήμιο του Πρίνσετον,στο New Jersey.Μέσα στο 1933,In 1933,του προσφέρθηκε μια θέση στην σχολή του Ινστιτούτου για Προηγμένες Γνώσεις,όταν το πλάνο του Ινστιτούτου ήταν να διορίσει τον Hermann Weyl.Ο Νόιμαν παρέμεινε καθηγητης μαθηματικών εκεί μέχρι τον θάνατό του.Η μητέρα του και τα αδέρφια του τον ακολούθησαν στις Η.Π.Α.Ο πατέρας του,Μαξ είχε πεθάνει το 1929. Μετέτρεψε το πρώτο του όνομα σε Γιάνος, διατηρώντας το Γερμανικό αριστοκρατικό επώνυμο Φον Νόιμαν.Μέσα στο 1937 ο Νόιμαν έγινε πολιτογραφημένος πολίτης των Η.Π.Α.Το 1938,βραβεύθηκε με το Bôcher Memorial Prize για την δουλειά και την ανάλυσή του.

Θεωρία των Συνόλων

Δείτε επίσης: Von Neumann–Bernays–Gödel set theory#History

The axiomatization των μαθηματικών,κατά το πρότυπο των Στοιχείων του Ευκλείδη ,είχε φτάσει σε νέα επίπεδα αυστηρότητας στα τέλη του 19ου αιώνα ,ιδιαίτερα στην αριθμιτική (χαρη στo the axiom schema του Richard Dedekind και του Charles Sanders Peirce) στην γεωμετρία (χάρη στoν David Hilbert). Στις αρχές του 20ου αιώνα, efforts to base mathematics on naive set theory suffered a setback due to Russell's paradox (on the set of all sets that do not belong to themselves).

The problem of an adequate axiomatization of set theory was resolved implicitly about twenty years later (by Ernst Zermelo and Abraham Fraenkel). Zermelo and Fraenkel provided Zermelo–Fraenkel set theory, a series of principles that allowed for the construction of the sets used in the everyday practice of mathematics. But they did not explicitly exclude the possibility of the existence of a set that belongs to itself. In his doctoral thesis of 1925, von Neumann demonstrated two techniques to exclude such sets: the axiom of foundation and the notion of class.

Excerpt from the university calendars for 1928 and 1928/29 of the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Berlin announcing Neumann's lectures on axiomatic set theory and logics, problems in quantum mechanics and special mathematical functions.

The axiom of foundation established that every set can be constructed from the bottom up in an ordered succession of steps by way of the principles of Zermelo and Fraenkel, in such a manner that if one set belongs to another then the first must necessarily come before the second in the succession (hence excluding the possibility of a set belonging to itself.) To demonstrate that the addition of this new axiom to the others did not produce contradictions, von Neumann introduced a method of demonstration (called the method of inner models) which later became an essential instrument in set theory.

The second approach to the problem took as its base the notion of class, and defines a set as a class which belongs to other classes, while a proper class is defined as a class which does not belong to other classes. Under the Zermelo/Fraenkel approach, the axioms impede the construction of a set of all sets which do not belong to themselves. In contrast, under the von Neumann approach, the class of all sets which do not belong to themselves can be constructed, but it is a proper class and not a set.

With this contribution of von Neumann, the axiomatic system of the theory of sets became fully satisfactory, and the next question was whether or not it was also definitive, and not subject to improvement. A strongly negative answer arrived in September 1930 at the historic mathematical Congress of Königsberg, in which Kurt Gödel announced his first theorem of incompleteness: the usual axiomatic systems are incomplete, in the sense that they cannot prove every truth which is expressible in their language. This result was sufficiently innovative as to confound the majority of mathematicians of the time.

But von Neumann, who had participated at the Congress, confirmed his fame as an instantaneous thinker, and in less than a month was able to communicate to Gödel himself an interesting consequence of his theorem: namely that the usual axiomatic systems are unable to demonstrate their own consistency. However, Gödel had already discovered this consequence (now known as his second incompleteness theorem), and sent von Neumann a preprint of his article containing both incompleteness theorems. Von Neumann acknowledged Gödel's priority in his next letter.

Geometry

Von Neumann founded the field of continuous geometry. It followed his path-breaking work on rings of operators. In mathematics, continuous geometry is an analogue of complex projective geometry, where instead of the dimension of a subspace being in a discrete set 0, 1, ..., n, it can be an element of the unit interval [0,1]. Von Neumann was motivated by his discovery of von Neumann algebras with a dimension function taking a continuous range of dimensions, and the first example of a continuous geometry other than projective space was the projections of the hyperfinite type II factor.

Measure theory

Δείτε επίσης: Lifting theory

In a series of famous papers, von Neumann made spectacular contributions to measure theory. The work of Banach had implied that the problem of measure has a positive solution if n = 1 or n = 2 and a negative solution in all other cases. Von Neumann's work argued that the "problem is essentially group-theoretic in character, and that, in particular, for the solvability of the problem of measure the ordinary algebraic concept of solvability of a group is relevant. Thus, according to von Neumann, it is the change of group that makes a difference, not the change of space."

In a number of von Neumann's papers, the methods of argument he employed are considered even more significant than the results. In anticipation of his later study of dimension theory in algebras of operators, von Neumann used results on equivalence by finite decomposition, and reformulated the problem of measure in terms of functions (anticipating his later work, Mathematical formulation of quantum mechanics, on almost periodic functions).

In the 1936 paper on analytic measure theory, von Neumann used the Haar theorem in the solution of Hilbert's fifth problem in the case of compact groups.

Ergodic theory

Von Neumann made foundational contributions to ergodic theory, in a series of articles published in 1932. Of the 1932 papers on ergodic theory, Paul Halmos writes that even "if von Neumann had never done anything else, they would have been sufficient to guarantee him mathematical immortality". By then von Neumann had already written his famous articles on operator theory, and the application of this work was instrumental in the von Neumann mean ergodic theorem.

Operator theory

Von Neumann introduced the study of rings of operators, through the von Neumann algebras. A von Neumann algebra is a *-algebra of bounded operators on a Hilbert space that is closed in the weak operator topology and contains the identity operator.

The von Neumann bicommutant theorem shows that the analytic definition is equivalent to a purely algebraic definition as an algebra of symmetries.

The direct integral was introduced in 1949 by John von Neumann. One of von Neumann's analyses was to reduce the classification of von Neumann algebras on separable Hilbert spaces to the classification of factors.

Lattice theory

Von Neumann worked on lattice theory between 1937 and 1939. Von Neumann provided an abstract exploration of dimension in completed complemented modular topological lattices: "Dimension is determined, up to a positive linear transformation, by the following two properties. It is conserved by perspective mappings ("perspectivities") and ordered by inclusion. The deepest part of the proof concerns the equivalence of perspectivity with "projectivity by decomposition"—of which a corollary is the transitivity of perspectivity." Garrett Birkhoff writes: "John von Neumann's brilliant mind blazed over lattice theory like a meteor".

Additionally, "[I]n the general case, von Neumann proved the following basic representation theorem. Any complemented modular lattice L having a "basis" of n≥4 pairwise perspective elements, is isomorphic with the lattice ℛ(R) of all principal right-ideals of a suitable regular ring R. This conclusion is the culmination of 140 pages of brilliant and incisive algebra involving entirely novel axioms. Anyone wishing to get an unforgettable impression of the razor edge of von Neumann's mind, need merely try to pursue this chain of exact reasoning for himself—realizing that often five pages of it were written down before breakfast, seated at a living room writing-table in a bathrobe."

Mathematical formulation of quantum mechanics

Δείτε επίσης: von Neumann entropy, Density matrix, Quantum mutual information, von Neumann measurement scheme, και Wave function collapse

{{quantum}}

Von Neumann was the first to rigorously establish a mathematical framework for quantum mechanics, known as the Dirac–von Neumann axioms, with his 1932 work Mathematische Grundlagen der Quantenmechanik.

After having completed the axiomatization of set theory, von Neumann began to confront the axiomatization of quantum mechanics. He immediately realized, in 1926, that a quantum system could be considered as a point in a so-called Hilbert space, analogous to the 6N dimension (N is the number of particles, 3 general coordinate and 3 canonical momentum for each) phase space of classical mechanics but with infinitely many dimensions (corresponding to the infinitely many possible states of the system) instead: the traditional physical quantities (e.g., position and momentum) could therefore be represented as particular linear operators operating in these spaces. The physics of quantum mechanics was thereby reduced to the mathematics of the linear Hermitian operators on Hilbert spaces.

For example, the uncertainty principle, according to which the determination of the position of a particle prevents the determination of its momentum and vice versa, is translated into the non-commutativity of the two corresponding operators. This new mathematical formulation included as special cases the formulations of both Heisenberg and Schrödinger.

Von Neumann's abstract treatment permitted him also to confront the foundational issue of determinism vs. non-determinism, and in the book he presented a proof that the statistical results of quantum mechanics could not possibly be averages of an underlying set of determined "hidden variables," as in classical statistical mechanics. In 1966, John S. Bell published a paper arguing that the proof contained a conceptual error and was therefore invalid (see the article on John Stewart Bell for more information). However, in 2010, Jeffrey Bub argued that Bell had misconstrued von Neumann's proof, and pointed out that the proof, though not valid for all hidden variable theories, does rule out a well-defined and important subset. Bub also suggests that von Neumann was aware of this limitation, and that von Neumann did not claim that his proof completely ruled out hidden variable theories. In any case, the proof inaugurated a line of research that ultimately led, through the work of Bell in 1964 on Bell's theorem, and the experiments of Alain Aspect in 1982, to the demonstration that quantum physics either requires a notion of reality substantially different from that of classical physics, or must include nonlocality in apparent violation of special relativity.

In a chapter of The Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Mechanics, von Neumann deeply analyzed the so-called measurement problem. He concluded that the entire physical universe could be made subject to the universal wave function. Since something "outside the calculation" was needed to collapse the wave function, von Neumann concluded that the collapse was caused by the consciousness of the experimenter (although this view was accepted by Eugene Wigner, it never gained acceptance amongst the majority of physicists).

Though theories of quantum mechanics continue to evolve to this day, there is a basic framework for the mathematical formalism of problems in quantum mechanics which underlies the majority of approaches and can be traced back to the mathematical formalisms and techniques first used by von Neumann. In other words, discussions about interpretation of the theory, and extensions to it, are now mostly conducted on the basis of shared assumptions about the mathematical foundations.

Quantum logic

In a famous paper of 1936, the first work ever to introduce quantum logics, von Neumann first proved that quantum mechanics requires a propositional calculus substantially different from all classical logics and rigorously isolated a new algebraic structure for quantum logics. The concept of creating a propositional calculus for quantum logic was first outlined in a short section in von Neumann's 1932 work. But in 1936, the need for the new propositional calculus was demonstrated through several proofs. For example, photons cannot pass through two successive filters which are polarized perpendicularly (e.g., one horizontally and the other vertically), and therefore, a fortiori, it cannot pass if a third filter polarized diagonally is added to the other two, either before or after them in the succession. But if the third filter is added in between the other two, the photons will indeed pass through. And this experimental fact is translatable into logic as the non-commutativity of conjunction $(A\land B)\neq (B\land A)$. It was also demonstrated that the laws of distribution of classical logic, $P\lor (Q\land R)=(P\lor Q)\land (P\lor R)$ and $P\land (Q\lor R)=(P\land Q)\lor (P\land R)$, are not valid for quantum theory. The reason for this is that a quantum disjunction, unlike the case for classical disjunction, can be true even when both of the disjuncts are false and this is, in turn, attributable to the fact that it is frequently the case, in quantum mechanics, that a pair of alternatives are semantically determinate, while each of its members are necessarily indeterminate. This latter property can be illustrated by a simple example. Suppose we are dealing with particles (such as electrons) of semi-integral spin (angular momentum) for which there are only two possible values: positive or negative. Then, a principle of indetermination establishes that the spin, relative to two different directions (e.g., x and y) results in a pair of incompatible quantities. Suppose that the state ɸ of a certain electron verifies the proposition "the spin of the electron in the x direction is positive." By the principle of indeterminacy, the value of the spin in the direction y will be completely indeterminate for ɸ. Hence, ɸ can verify neither the proposition "the spin in the direction of y is positive" nor the proposition "the spin in the direction of y is negative." Nevertheless, the disjunction of the propositions "the spin in the direction of y is positive or the spin in the direction of y is negative" must be true for ɸ. In the case of distribution, it is therefore possible to have a situation in which $A\land (B\lor C)=A\land 1=A$, while $(A\land B)\lor (A\land C)=0\lor 0=0$.

Von Neumann proposes to replace classical logics, with a logic constructed in orthomodular lattices, (isomorphic to the lattice of subspaces of the Hilbert space of a given physical system).

Game theory

Von Neumann founded the field of game theory as a mathematical discipline. Von Neumann proved his minimax theorem in 1928. This theorem establishes that in zero-sum games with perfect information (i.e., in which players know at each time all moves that have taken place so far), there exists a pair of strategies for both players that allows each to minimize his maximum losses (hence the name minimax). When examining every possible strategy, a player must consider all the possible responses of his adversary. The player then plays out the strategy that will result in the minimization of his maximum loss.

Such strategies, which minimize the maximum loss for each player, are called optimal. Von Neumann showed that their minimaxes are equal (in absolute value) and contrary (in sign). Von Neumann improved and extended the minimax theorem to include games involving imperfect information and games with more than two players, publishing this result in his 1944 Theory of Games and Economic Behavior (written with Oskar Morgenstern). The public interest in this work was such that The New York Times ran a front-page story. In this book, von Neumann declared that economic theory needed to use functional analytic methods, especially convex sets and topological fixed point theorem, rather than the traditional differential calculus, because the maximum–operator did not preserve differentiable functions.

Independently, Leonid Kantorovich's functional analytic work on mathematical economics also focused attention on optimization theory, non-differentiability, and vector lattices. Von Neumann's functional-analytic techniques—the use of duality pairings of real vector spaces to represent prices and quantities, the use of supporting and separating hyperplanes and convex set, and fixed-point theory—have been the primary tools of mathematical economics ever since. Von Neumann was also the inventor of the method of proof, used in game theory, known as backward induction (which he first published in 1944 in the book co-authored with Morgenstern, Theory of Games and Economic Behaviour).

Morgenstern wrote a paper on game theory and thought he would show it to von Neumann because of his interest in the subject. He read it and said to Morgenstern that he should put more in it. This was repeated a couple of times, and then von Neumann became a coauthor and the paper became 100 pages long. Then it became a book.

Mathematical economics

Von Neumann raised the intellectual and mathematical level of economics in several stunning publications. For his model of an expanding economy, von Neumann proved the existence and uniqueness of an equilibrium using his generalization of Brouwer's fixed point theorem. Von Neumann's model of an expanding economy considered the matrix pencil  A − λB with nonnegative matrices A and B; von Neumann sought probability vectors p and q and a positive number λ that would solve the complementarity equation

p^T (A − λ B) q = 0,

along with two inequality systems expressing economic efficiency. In this model, the (transposed) probability vector p represents the prices of the goods while the probability vector q represents the "intensity" at which the production process would run. The unique solution λ represents the growth factor which is 1 plus the rate of growth of the economy; the rate of growth equals the interest rate. Proving the existence of a positive growth rate and proving that the growth rate equals the interest rate were remarkable achievements, even for von Neumann.

Von Neumann's results have been viewed as a special case of linear programming, where von Neumann's model uses only nonnegative matrices. The study of von Neumann's model of an expanding economy continues to interest mathematical economists with interests in computational economics. This paper has been called the greatest paper in mathematical economics by several authors, who recognized its introduction of fixed-point theorems, linear inequalities, complementary slackness, and saddlepoint duality. In the proceedings of a conference on von Neumann's growth model, Paul Samuelson said that many mathematicians had developed methods useful to economists, but that von Neumann was unique in having made significant contributions to economic theory itself.

The lasting importance of the work on general equilibria and the methodology of fixed point theorems is underscored by the awarding of Nobel prizes in 1972 to Kenneth Arrow, in 1983 to Gérard Debreu, and in 1994 to John Nash who used fixed point theorems to establish equilibria for noncooperative games and for bargaining problems in his Ph.D. thesis. Arrow and Debreu also used linear programming, as did Nobel laureates Tjalling Koopmans, Leonid Kantorovich, Wassily Leontief, Paul Samuelson, Robert Dorfman, Robert Solow, and Leonid Hurwicz.

Linear programming

Building on his results on matrix games and on his model of an expanding economy, von Neumann invented the theory of duality in linear programming, after George B. Dantzig described his work in a few minutes, when an impatient von Neumann asked him to get to the point. Then, Dantzig listened dumbfounded while von Neumann provided an hour lecture on convex sets, fixed-point theory, and duality, conjecturing the equivalence between matrix games and linear programming.

Later, von Neumann suggested a new method of linear programming, using the homogeneous linear system of Gordan (1873) which was later popularized by Karmarkar's algorithm. Von Neumann's method used a pivoting algorithm between simplices, with the pivoting decision determined by a nonnegative least squares subproblem with a convexity constraint (projecting the zero-vector onto the convex hull of the active simplex). Von Neumann's algorithm was the first interior-point method of linear programming.

Mathematical statistics

Von Neumann made fundamental contributions to mathematical statistics. In 1941, he derived the exact distribution of the ratio of the mean square of successive differences to the sample variance for independent and identically normally distributed variables. This ratio was applied to the residuals from regression models and is commonly known as the Durbin–Watson statistic for testing the null hypothesis that the errors are serially independent against the alternative that they follow a stationary first order autoregression.

Subsequently, John Denis Sargan and Alok Bhargava extended the results for testing if the errors on a regression model follow a Gaussian random walk (i.e. possess a unit root) against the alternative that they are a stationary first order autoregression.

Nuclear weapons

von Neumann's wartime Los Alamos ID badge photo.

Beginning in the late 1930s, von Neumann developed an expertise in explosions—phenomena which are difficult to model mathematically. During this period von Neumann was the leading authority of the mathematics of shaped charges. This led him to a large number of military consultancies, primarily for the Navy, which in turn led to his involvement in the Manhattan Project. The involvement included frequent trips by train to the project's secret research facilities in Los Alamos, New Mexico.

Von Neumann's principal contribution to the atomic bomb itself was in the concept and design of the explosive lenses needed to compress the plutonium core of the Trinity test device and the "Fat Man" weapon that was later dropped on Nagasaki. While von Neumann did not originate the "implosion" concept, he was one of its most persistent proponents, encouraging its continued development against the instincts of many of his colleagues, who felt such a design to be unworkable. He also eventually came up with the idea of using more powerful shaped charges and less fissionable material to greatly increase the speed of "assembly" (compression).

When it turned out that there would not be enough U235 to make more than one bomb, the implosive lens project was greatly expanded and von Neumann's idea was implemented. Implosion was the only method that could be used with the plutonium-239 that was available from the Hanford site. His calculations showed that implosion would work if it did not depart by more than 5% from spherical symmetry. After a series of failed attempts with models, 5% was achieved by George Kistiakowsky, and the construction of the Trinity bomb was completed in July 1945.

In a visit to Los Alamos in September 1944, von Neumann showed that the pressure increase from explosion shock wave reflection from solid objects was greater than previously believed if the angle of incidence of the shock wave was between 90° and some limiting angle. As a result, it was determined that the effectiveness of an atomic bomb would be enhanced with detonation some kilometers above the target, rather than at ground level.

Beginning in the spring of 1945, along with four other scientists and various military personnel, von Neumann was included in the target selection committee responsible for choosing the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as the first targets of the atomic bomb. Von Neumann oversaw computations related to the expected size of the bomb blasts, estimated death tolls, and the distance above the ground at which the bombs should be detonated for optimum shock wave propagation and thus maximum effect. The cultural capital Kyoto, which had been spared the firebombing inflicted upon militarily significant target cities like Tokyo in World War II, was von Neumann's first choice, a selection seconded by Manhattan Project leader General Leslie Groves. However, this target was dismissed by Secretary of War Henry Stimson.

On July 16, 1945, with numerous other Los Alamos personnel, von Neumann was an eyewitness to the first atomic bomb blast, code named Trinity, conducted as a test of the implosion method device, on the White Sands Proving Ground, 35 miles (56 km) southeast of Socorro, New Mexico. Based on his observation alone, von Neumann estimated the test had resulted in a blast equivalent to 5 kilotons of TNT, but Enrico Fermi produced a more accurate estimate of 10 kilotons by dropping scraps of torn-up paper as the shock wave passed his location and watching how far they scattered. The actual power of the explosion had been between 20 and 22 kilotons.

After the war, Robert Oppenheimer remarked that the physicists involved in the Manhattan project had "known sin". Von Neumann's response was that "sometimes someone confesses a sin in order to take credit for it."

Von Neumann continued unperturbed in his work and became, along with Edward Teller, one of those who sustained the hydrogen bomb project. He then collaborated with Klaus Fuchs on further development of the bomb, and in 1946 the two filed a secret patent on "Improvement in Methods and Means for Utilizing Nuclear Energy", which outlined a scheme for using a fission bomb to compress fusion fuel to initiate a thermonuclear reaction. The Fuchs–von Neumann patent used radiation implosion, but not in the same way as is used in what became the final hydrogen bomb design, the Teller–Ulam design. Their work was, however, incorporated into the "George" shot of Operation Greenhouse, which was instructive in testing out concepts that went into the final design.

The Fuchs–von Neumann work was passed on, by Fuchs, to the USSR as part of his nuclear espionage, but it was not used in the Soviets' own, independent development of the Teller–Ulam design. The historian Jeremy Bernstein has pointed out that ironically, "John von Neumann and Klaus Fuchs, produced a brilliant invention in 1946 that could have changed the whole course of the development of the hydrogen bomb, but was not fully understood until after the bomb had been successfully made."

The Atomic Energy Committee

In 1954 von Neumann was invited to become a member of the Atomic Energy Committee. He thought long and hard about this offer, because it's a big job and he figured he would need to resign from the Institute for Advanced Study and the IAS computer project. He accepted this powerful position and used it to further the production of compact H-bombs suitable for ICBM delivery. He involved himself personally in correcting the severe shortage of Tritium and Lithium 6 needed for these compact weapons, and he argued against settling for the intermediate range missiles that the Army wanted. He was adamant that H-bombs delivered into the heart of enemy territory by an ICBM would be the most effective weapon possible, and that the relative inaccuracy of the missile wouldn't be a problem with an H-Bomb. He said the Russians would probably be building a similar weapon system, which turned out to be the case.

The ICBM Committee

In 1955, von Neumann became a commissioner of the United States Atomic Energy Program. Shortly before his death, when he was already quite ill, von Neumann headed the US government's top secret Intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) committee, and it would sometimes meet in his home. Its purpose was to decide on the feasibility of building an ICBM large enough to carry a thermonuclear weapon. Von Neumann had long argued that while the technical obstacles were sizable, they could be overcome in time. The SM-65 Atlas passed its first fully functional test in 1959, two years after his death. The feasibility of an ICBM owed as much to improved, smaller warheads as it did to developments in rocketry, and his understanding of the former made his advice invaluable.

Mutually assured destruction

John von Neumann is credited with the equilibrium strategy of mutually assured destruction, providing the deliberately humorous acronym, MAD. (Other humorous acronyms coined by von Neumann include his computer, the Mathematical Analyzer, Numerical Integrator, and Computer – or MANIAC).

Computing

The first implementation of von Neumann's self-reproducing universal constructor. Three generations of machine are shown, the second has nearly finished constructing the third. The lines running to the right are the tapes of genetic instructions, which are copied along with the body of the machines. The machine shown runs in a 32-state version of von Neumann's cellular automata environment.

Von Neumann was a founding figure in computing. Von Neumann's hydrogen bomb work was played out in the realm of computing, where he and Stanislaw Ulam developed simulations on von Neumann's digital computers for the hydrodynamic computations. During this time he contributed to the development of the Monte Carlo method, which allowed solutions to complicated problems to be approximated using random numbers. He was also involved in the design of the later IAS machine.

Because using lists of "truly" random numbers was extremely slow, von Neumann developed a form of making pseudorandom numbers, using the middle-square method. Though this method has been criticized as crude, von Neumann was aware of this: he justified it as being faster than any other method at his disposal, and also noted that when it went awry it did so obviously, unlike methods which could be subtly incorrect.

While consulting for the Moore School of Electrical Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania on the EDVAC project, von Neumann wrote an incomplete First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC. The paper, whose premature distribution nullified the patent claims of EDVAC designers J. Presper Eckert and John William Mauchly, described a computer architecture in which the data and the program are both stored in the computer's memory in the same address space.

John von Neumann also consulted for the ENIAC project, when ENIAC was being modified to contain stored programs. Since the modified ENIAC was fully functional by 1948 and the EDVAC wasn't delivered to Ballistics Research Laboratory until 1949, one could argue that ENIAC was the first computer to use a stored program in production runs. John von Neumann also designed the instruction set or op codes for the modified ENIAC, and he should be given credit for this. The electronics of the new ENIAC ran 6 times slower, but this in no way degraded the ENIAC's performance, since it was still entirely I/O bound. On the other hand, complicated programs could be developed and debugged in days rather than weeks, which is one of the advantages of storing the entire program in the computers electronics. The crucial point is whether or not a new paper tape has to be produced, using a slow and error prone tape punch every time the program is altered in any way, and then read in mechanically. A program is typically modified many times before it reaches its final form.

This architecture is to this day the basis of modern computer design, unlike the earliest computers that were 'programmed' by altering the electronic circuitry. Although the single-memory, stored program architecture is commonly called von Neumann architecture as a result of von Neumann's paper, the architecture's description was based on the work of J. Presper Eckert and John William Mauchly, inventors of the ENIAC at the University of Pennsylvania.

The next computer that von Neumann designed was the IAS machine at The Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. He arranged its financing, and the components were designed and built at the RCA Research Laboratory nearby. John von Neumann recommended that the IBM 701, nicknamed the defense computer include a magnetic drum. It was a faster version of the IAS machine and formed the basis for the commercially successful IBM 704.

Stochastic computing was first introduced in a pioneering paper by von Neumann in 1953. However, the theory could not be implemented until advances in computing of the 1960s.

Von Neumann also created the field of cellular automata without the aid of computers, constructing the first self-replicating automata with pencil and graph paper. The concept of a universal constructor was fleshed out in his posthumous work Theory of Self Reproducing Automata. Von Neumann proved that the most effective way of performing large-scale mining operations such as mining an entire moon or asteroid belt would be by using self-replicating machines, taking advantage of their exponential growth.

Von Neumann's rigorous mathematical analysis of the structure of self-replication, preceded the discovery of the structure of DNA.

Beginning in 1949, Von Neumann's design for a self-reproducing computer program is considered the world's first computer virus, and he is considered to be the theoretical father of computer virology.

Donald Knuth cites von Neumann as the inventor, in 1945, of the merge sort algorithm, in which the first and second halves of an array are each sorted recursively and then merged.

His algorithm for simulating a fair coin with a biased coin is used in the "software whitening" stage of some hardware random number generators.

Fluid dynamics

Von Neumann made fundamental contributions in exploration of problems in numerical hydrodynamics. For example, with R. D. Richtmyer he developed an algorithm defining artificial viscosity that improved the understanding of shock waves. It is possible that we would not understand much of astrophysics, and might not have highly developed jet and rocket engines without the work of von Neumann.

A problem was that when computers solved hydrodynamic or aerodynamic problems, they tried to put too many computational grid points at regions of sharp discontinuity (shock waves). The mathematics of artificial viscosity smoothed the shock transition without sacrificing basic physics.

Other well known contributions to fluid dynamics included the classic flow solution to blast waves, and the co-discovery of the ZND detonation model of explosives.

Politics and social affairs

John von Neumann at The Princeton Institute for Advanced Study (Left to right: Julian Bigelow, Herman Goldstine, J. Robert Oppenheimer, and John von Neumann).

Von Neumann obtained at the age of 29 one of the first five professorships at the new Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey (another had gone to Albert Einstein). He was a frequent consultant for the Central Intelligence Agency, the United States Army, the RAND Corporation, Standard Oil, General Electric, IBM, and others.

Throughout his life von Neumann had a respect and admiration for business and government leaders; something which was often at variance with the inclinations of his scientific colleagues. Von Neumann entered government service (Manhattan Project) primarily because he felt that, if freedom and civilization were to survive, it would have to be because the U.S. would triumph over totalitarianism from the right (Nazism and Fascism) and totalitarianism from the left (Soviet Communism).

As president of the von Neumann Committee for Missiles, and later as a member of the United States Atomic Energy Commission, from 1953 until his death in 1957, he was influential in setting U.S. scientific and military policy. Through his committee, he developed various scenarios of nuclear proliferation, the development of intercontinental and submarine missiles with atomic warheads, and the controversial strategic equilibrium called mutual assured destruction. During a Senate committee hearing he described his political ideology as "violently anti-communist, and much more militaristic than the norm". He was quoted in 1950 remarking, "If you say why not bomb [the Soviets] tomorrow, I say, why not today. If you say today at five o'clock, I say why not one o'clock?".

Weather systems

Von Neumann's team performed the world's first numerical weather forecasts on the ENIAC computer; von Neumann published the paper Numerical Integration of the Barotropic Vorticity Equation in 1950. Von Neumann's interest in weather systems and meteorological prediction led him to propose manipulating the environment by spreading colorants on the polar ice caps to enhance absorption of solar radiation (by reducing the albedo), thereby inducing global warming.

Cognitive abilities

Von Neumann's ability to instantaneously perform complex operations in his head stunned other mathematicians. Eugene Wigner wrote that, seeing von Neumann's mind at work, "one had the impression of a perfect instrument whose gears were machined to mesh accurately to a thousandth of an inch." Paul Halmos states that "von Neumann's speed was awe-inspiring." Israel Halperin said: "Keeping up with him was ... impossible. The feeling was you were on a tricycle chasing a racing car." Edward Teller wrote that von Neumann effortlessly outdid anybody he ever met, and said "I never could keep up with him". Teller also said "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. Most people avoid thinking if they can, some of us are addicted to thinking, but von Neumann actually enjoyed thinking, maybe even to the exclusion of everything else."

Lothar Wolfgang Nordheim described von Neumann as the "fastest mind I ever met", and Jacob Bronowski wrote "He was the cleverest man I ever knew, without exception. He was a genius." George Pólya, whose lectures at ETH Zurich von Neumann attended as a student, said "Johnny was the only student I was ever afraid of. If in the course of a lecture I stated an unsolved problem, the chances were he'd come to me at the end of the lecture with the complete solution scribbled on a slip of paper." Halmos recounts a story told by Nicholas Metropolis, concerning the speed of von Neumann's calculations, when somebody asked von Neumann to solve the famous fly puzzle:

Two bicyclists start twenty miles apart and head toward each other, each going at a steady rate of 10 mph. At the same time a fly that travels at a steady 15 mph starts from the front wheel of the southbound bicycle and flies to the front wheel of the northbound one, then turns around and flies to the front wheel of the southbound one again, and continues in this manner till he is crushed between the two front wheels. Question: what total distance did the fly cover? The slow way to find the answer is to calculate what distance the fly covers on the first, northbound, leg of the trip, then on the second, southbound, leg, then on the third, etc., etc., and, finally, to sum the infinite series so obtained. The quick way is to observe that the bicycles meet exactly one hour after their start, so that the fly had just an hour for his travels; the answer must therefore be 15 miles. When the question was put to von Neumann, he solved it in an instant, and thereby disappointed the questioner: "Oh, you must have heard the trick before!" "What trick?" asked von Neumann, "All I did was sum the geometric series."

Von Neumann had a very strong eidetic memory, commonly called 'photographic' memory. Herman Goldstine writes: "One of his remarkable abilities was his power of absolute recall. As far as I could tell, von Neumann was able on once reading a book or article to quote it back verbatim; moreover, he could do it years later without hesitation. He could also translate it at no diminution in speed from its original language into English. On one occasion I tested his ability by asking him to tell me how The Tale of Two Cities started. Whereupon, without any pause, he immediately began to recite the first chapter and continued until asked to stop after about ten or fifteen minutes."

It has been said that von Neumann's intellect was absolutely unmatched. "I have sometimes wondered whether a brain like von Neumann's does not indicate a species superior to that of man", said Nobel Laureate Hans A. Bethe of Cornell University. "It seems fair to say that if the influence of a scientist is interpreted broadly enough to include impact on fields beyond science proper, then John von Neumann was probably the most influential mathematician who ever lived," wrote Miklós Rédei in "Selected Letters." Glimm writes "he is regarded as one of the giants of modern mathematics". The mathematician Jean Dieudonné called von Neumann "the last of the great mathematicians", while Peter Lax described him as possessing the "most scintillating intellect of this century".

Mastery of Mathematics

Stan Ulam, who knew von Neumann well, described his mastery of Mathematics this way: "Most mathematicians know one method. For example, Norbert Wiener had mastered Fourier transforms. Some mathematicians have mastered two methods and might really impress someone who knows only one of them. John von Neumann had mastered three methods." He went on to explain that the three methods were

• A Facility with the Symbolic Manipulation of Linear Operators;

• An intuitive feeling for the logical structure of any new mathematical theories;

• An intuitive feeling for the combinatorial superstructure of new theories.

Personal life

Von Neumann married twice. He married Mariette Kövesi in 1930, just prior to emigrating to the United States. Before his marriage he was also baptized a Catholic in 1930. They had one daughter (von Neumann's only child), Marina, who is now a distinguished professor of international trade and public policy at the University of Michigan. The couple divorced in 1937. In 1938, von Neumann married Klara Dan, whom he had met during his last trips back to Budapest prior to the outbreak of World War II. The von Neumanns were very active socially within the Princeton academic community.

Von Neumann had a wide range of cultural interests. Since the age of six, von Neumann had been fluent in Latin and ancient Greek, and he held a lifelong passion for ancient history, being renowned for his prodigious historical knowledge. A professor of Byzantine history once said that von Neumann had greater expertise in Byzantine history than he did.

Von Neumann took great care over his clothing, and would always wear formal suits, once riding down the Grand Canyon astride a mule in a three-piece pin-stripe. Mathematician David Hilbert is reported to have asked at von Neumann's 1926 doctoral exam: "Pray, who is the candidate's tailor?" as he had never seen such beautiful evening clothes.

He was sociable and enjoyed throwing large parties at his home in Princeton, occasionally twice a week. His white clapboard house at 26 Westcott Road was one of the largest in Princeton.

Despite being a notoriously bad driver, he nonetheless enjoyed driving (frequently while reading a book)—occasioning numerous arrests as well as accidents. When Cuthbert Hurd hired him as a consultant to IBM, Hurd often quietly paid the fines for his traffic tickets. He believed that much of his mathematical thought occurred intuitively, and he would often go to sleep with a problem unsolved, and know the answer immediately upon waking up.

Von Neumann liked to eat and drink; his wife, Klara, said that he could count everything except calories. He enjoyed Yiddish and "off-color" humor (especially limericks). At Princeton he received complaints for regularly playing extremely loud German marching music on his gramophone, which distracted those in neighbouring offices, including Einstein, from their work. Von Neumann did some of his best work blazingly fast in noisy, chaotic environments, and once admonished his wife for preparing a quiet study for him to work in. He never used it, preferring the couple's living room with its TV playing loudly.

Von Neumann's closest friend in the United States was the Polish mathematician Stanislaw Ulam. A later friend of Ulam's, Gian-Carlo Rota writes: "They would spend hours on end gossiping and giggling, swapping Jewish jokes, and drifting in and out of mathematical talk." When von Neumann was dying in hospital, every time Ulam would visit he would come prepared with a new collection of jokes to cheer up his friend.

Later life

Von Neumann's gravestone

In 1955, von Neumann was diagnosed with what was either bone or pancreatic cancer. A von Neumann biographer, Norman Macrae, has speculated that the cancer was caused by von Neumann's presence at the Operation Crossroads nuclear tests held in 1946 at Bikini Atoll.

His mother Margaret von Neumann was diagnosed as having cancer, and died within two weeks. John had eighteen months from diagnosis till death. In this period Johnny returned to the Roman Catholic faith that had also been significant to his mother after the family’s conversion in 1929-30. There are those who say{{who?|date=June 2014}} that he took instruction from the priest at the hospital mainly because the priest was an educated individual, whom Johnny could talk to of classical Rome and Greece better than he could to the soldiers on guard. But Johnny had earlier said to his mother, “There is probably a God. Many things are easier to explain if there is than if there isn’t."

John von Neumann held on to his exemplary knowledge of Latin and quoted to a deathbed visitor the declamation “Judex ergo cum sedebit,” and ends “Quid sum miser tun dicturus? Quem patronem rogaturus, cum vixiustus sed sicurus?” (When the judge His seat hath taken...What shall wretched I then plead? Who for me shall intercede when the righteous scarce is freed?)

Von Neumann died a year and a half after the diagnosis of cancer, at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C. under military security lest he reveal military secrets while heavily medicated. On his death bed, he entertained his brother with word-for-word recitations of the first few lines of each page of Goethe's Faust. He was buried at Princeton Cemetery in Princeton, Mercer County, New Jersey.

While at Walter Reed, he invited a Roman Catholic priest, Father Anselm Strittmatter, O.S.B., to visit him for consultation. Von Neumann reportedly said in explanation that Pascal had a point, referring to Pascal's wager. Father Strittmatter administered the last sacraments to him. Some of Von Neumann's friends (such as Robert Oppenheimer and Oskar Morgenstern), having always known him as "completely agnostic", believed that his religious conversion was not genuine since it did not reflect his attitudes and thoughts when he was healthy. Even after his conversion, Father Strittmatter recalled that von Neumann did not receive much peace or comfort from it as he still remained terrified of death.

Honors

• The John von Neumann Theory Prize of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS, previously TIMS-ORSA) is awarded annually to an individual (or group) who have made fundamental and sustained contributions to theory in operations research and the management sciences.
• The IEEE John von Neumann Medal is awarded annually by the IEEE "for outstanding achievements in computer-related science and technology."
• The John von Neumann Lecture is given annually at the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) by a researcher who has contributed to applied mathematics, and the chosen lecturer is also awarded a monetary prize.
• The crater von Neumann on the Moon is named after him.
• The John von Neumann Center in Plainsboro Township, New Jersey (40.348695°N 74.592251°W / 40.348695; -74.592251 (John von Neumann Center)) was named in his honour.
• The professional society of Hungarian computer scientists, John von Neumann Computer Society, is named after John von Neumann.
• On February 15, 1956, Neumann was presented with the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Dwight Eisenhower.
• On May 4, 2005 the United States Postal Service issued the American Scientists commemorative postage stamp series, a set of four 37-cent self-adhesive stamps in several configurations designed by artist Victor Stabin. The scientists depicted were John von Neumann, Barbara McClintock, Josiah Willard Gibbs, and Richard Feynman.
• The John von Neumann Award of the Rajk László College for Advanced Studies was named in his honour, and has been given every year since 1995 to professors who have made an outstanding contribution to the exact social sciences and through their work have strongly influenced the professional development and thinking of the members of the college.

Info Park and Neumann János Street

Infopark is situated in the 11th district of Budapest, near the Buda side of Rákóczi bridge, in the university neighborhood, across the river from the National Theatre and the Palace of Arts. The streets bordering Infopark are Hevesy György Street, Boulevard of Hungarian Scientists, Street of Hungarian Nobel Prize Winners and Neumann János street.

Selected works

• 1923. On the introduction of transfinite numbers, 346–54.
• 1925. An axiomatization of set theory, 393–413.
• 1932. Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Mechanics, Beyer, R. T., trans., Princeton Univ. Press. 1996 edition: ISBN 0-691-02893-1.
• 1944. Theory of Games and Economic Behavior, with Morgenstern, O., Princeton Univ. Press, online at archive.org. 2007 edition: ISBN 978-0-691-13061-3.
• 1945. First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC TheFirstDraft.pdf
• 1963. Collected Works of John von Neumann, Taub, A. H., ed., Pergamon Press. ISBN 0-08-009566-6
• 1966. Theory of Self-Reproducing Automata, Burks, A. W., ed., University of Illinois Press. ISBN 0-598-37798-0
• von Neumann, John (1998) [1960]. Continuous geometry. Princeton Landmarks in Mathematics. Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-05893-1. MR 0120174. 
• von Neumann, John (1981) [1937]. Halperin, Israel, επιμ. Continuous geometries with a transition probability. Memoirs of the American Mathematical Society. 34. ISBN 9780821822524. ISSN 0065-9266. MR 0634656. 

See also

• List of things named after John von Neumann
• Self-replicating spacecraft
• Von Neumann–Bernays–Gödel set theory
• Von Neumann algebra
• Von Neumann architecture
• Von Neumann bicommutant theorem
• Von Neumann conjecture
• Von Neumann entropy
• Von Neumann programming languages
• Von Neumann regular ring
• Von Neumann universal constructor
• Von Neumann universe
• Von Neumann's trace inequality

PhD Students

• Donald B. Gillies, Ph.D. student
• Israel Halperin, Ph.D. student

Notes

References

• Blair, Clay, Jr. Passing of a Great Mind, Life Magazine, 25 February 1957
• Doran, Robert S. (2004). Operator Algebras, Quantization, and Noncommutative Geometry: A Centennial Celebration Honoring John Von Neumann and Marshall H. Stone. American Mathematical Society Bookstore. ISBN 978-0-8218-3402-2. 
• Goldstine, Herman The Computer from Pascal to von Neumann, Princeton University Press, 1980, ISBN 0691023670.
• Heims, Steve J. (1980). John von Neumann and Norbert Wiener, from Mathematics to the Technologies of Life and Death. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press. ISBN 0-262-08105-9. 
• Herken, Gregg (2002). Brotherhood of the Bomb: The Tangled Lives and Loyalties of Robert Oppenheimer, Ernest Lawrence, and Edward Teller. ISBN 978-0-8050-6588-6. 
• Glimm, James; Impagliazzo, John; Singer, Isadore Manuel The Legacy of John von Neumann, American Mathematical Society 1990 ISBN 0-8218-4219-6
• Israel, Giorgio· Ana Millan Gasca (1995). The World as a Mathematical Game: John von Neumann, Twentieth Century Scientist. 
• MacRae, Norman (1992). John von Neumann: The Scientific Genius Who Pioneered the Modern Computer, Game Theory, Nuclear Deterrence, and Much More. Pantheon Press. ISBN 0-679-41308-1. 
• Slater, Robert (1989). Portraits in Silicon. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. σελίδες 23–33. ISBN 0-262-69131-0. 

{{FOLDOC}}

Further reading

• Aspray, William, 1990. John von Neumann and the Origins of Modern Computing.
• Chiara, Dalla, Maria Luisa and Giuntini, Roberto 1997, La Logica Quantistica in Boniolo, Giovani, ed., Filosofia della Fisica (Philosophy of Physics). Bruno Mondadori.
• Halmos, Paul R., 1985. I Want To Be A Mathematician Springer-Verlag
• Hashagen, Ulf, 2006: Johann Ludwig Neumann von Margitta (1903–1957). "Teil 1: Lehrjahre eines jüdischen Mathematikers während der Zeit der Weimarer Republik". In: Informatik-Spektrum 29 (2), S. 133–141.
• Hashagen, Ulf, 2006: Johann Ludwig Neumann von Margitta (1903–1957). "Teil 2: Ein Privatdozent auf dem Weg von Berlin nach Princeton". In: Informatik-Spektrum 29 (3), S. 227–236.
• Heims, Steve J., 1980. John von Neumann and Norbert Wiener: From Mathematics to the Technologies of Life and Death MIT Press
• Poundstone, William. Prisoner's Dilemma: John von Neumann, Game Theory and the Puzzle of the Bomb. 1992.
• Redei, Miklos (ed.), 2005 John von Neumann: Selected Letters American Mathematical Society
• Ulam, Stanislaw, 1983. Adventures of a Mathematician Scribner's
• Vonneuman, Nicholas A. John von Neumann as Seen by His Brother ISBN 0-9619681-0-9
• 1958, Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society 64.
• 1990. Proceedings of the American Mathematical Society Symposia in Pure Mathematics 50.
• John von Neumann 1903–1957, biographical memoir by S. Bochner, National Academy of Sciences, 1958

Popular periodicals

• Good Housekeeping Magazine, September 1956 Married to a Man Who Believes the Mind Can Move the World

Video

• John von Neumann, A Documentary (60 min.), Mathematical Association of America

External links

• O'Connor, John J.; Robertson, Edmund F., «Iliastef», MacTutor History of Mathematics archive, University of St Andrews, http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Von_Neumann.html .
• von Neumann's contribution to economics—International Social Science Review
• von Neumann's Scholar Google profile
• Oral history interview with Alice R. Burks and Arthur W. Burks, Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. Alice Burks and Arthur Burks describe ENIAC, EDVAC, and IAS computers, and John von Neumann's contribution to the development of computers.
• Oral history interview with Eugene P. Wigner, Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis.
• Oral history interview with Nicholas C. Metropolis, Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota.
• Von Neumann vs. Dirac — from Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
• John von Neumann Postdoctoral Fellowship at Sandia National Laboratories
• Von Neumann's Universe, audio talk by George Dyson
• John von Neumann's 100th Birthday, article by Stephen Wolfram on von Neumann's 100th birthday.
• Annotated bibliography for John von Neumann from the Alsos Digital Library for Nuclear Issues
• Budapest Tech Polytechnical Institution – John von Neumann Faculty of Informatics
• John von Neumann speaking at the dedication of the NORD, December 2, 1954 (audio recording)
• The American Presidency Project
• Jewish.hu: Famous Hungarian Jews
• John von Neumann (1903–1957). The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics. Library of Economics and Liberty (2nd έκδοση). Liberty Fund. 2008. 
• {{Findagrave|7333144}} {{Set theory}}

{{Persondata | NAME = von Neumann, John | ALTERNATIVE NAMES =Neumann János Lajos Margittai (Hungarian) | SHORT DESCRIPTION =[[Mathematician]] and [[polymath]] | DATE OF BIRTH = December 28, 1903 | PLACE OF BIRTH = [[Budapest]], [[Austria-Hungary]] | DATE OF DEATH = February 8, 1957 | PLACE OF DEATH = [[Washington DC]], United States }}