John von Neumann and the art of being there

The Last Theory
The Last Theory
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Published 2023-06-30
John von Neumann might be the most important figure in Wolfram Physics prehistory.

Whenever any of the most important prerequisites to Wolfram Physics were happening – quantum mechanics, Gödel’s theorem, Turing machines, electronic computers, cellular automata – John von Neumann always seemed to be there.

How did John von Neumann always come to be in the right place at the right time to contribute to some of the most significant developments in physics, mathematics and computation history?

For this, another high-budget, big-hair episode of The Last Theory, I flew all the way to Budapest, where John von Neumann was born, to point to a plaque and get some answers.

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I took inspiration and information for this episode from Ananyo Bhattacharya’s twitter.com/Ananyo biography of John von Neumann: The Man from the Future

People

- John von Neumann en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_von_Neumann
- Albert Einstein en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein
- Erwin Schrödinger en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erwin_Schr%C3%B6dinger
- Werner Heisenberg en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Werner_Heisenberg
- Kurt Gödel en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_G%C3%B6del
- Alan Turing en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Turing
- Seth Neddermeyer en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seth_Neddermeyer
- J. Presper Eckert en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%2E_Presper_Eckert
- John Mauchly en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Mauchly
- Stephen Wolfram en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Wolfram
- Jonathan Gorard www.wolframphysics.org/people/jonathan-gorard/
- Max Piskunov www.wolframphysics.org/people/max-piskunov/
- Stanisław Ulam en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanis%C5%82aw_Ulam
- Father Strickland quoteinvestigator.com/2010/12/21/doing-good-selfle…

Concepts

- Hilbert space en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilbert_space
- Gödel’s incompleteness theorems en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del%E2%80%99s_incompl…
- Universal Turing machine en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Turing_machine
- Turing’s proof en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing%27s_proof
- Von Neumann architecture en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Von_Neumann_architecture
- The Manhattan Project en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattan_Project
- Cellular automata en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellular_automaton

Computers

- IAS machine en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IAS_machine
- ENIAC en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ENIAC
- EDVAC en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EDVAC
- IBM 701 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_701

Images

- Image of John von Neumann from the Los Alamos National Laboratory, which rather pointlessly requires that this rather ponderous statement be reproduced here: “Unless otherwise indicated, this information has been authored by an employee or employees of the Los Alamos National Security, LLC (LANS), operator of the Los Alamos National Laboratory under Contract No. DE-AC52-06NA25396 with the U.S. Department of Energy. The U.S. Government has rights to use, reproduce, and distribute this information. The public may copy and use this information without charge, provided that this Notice and any statement of authorship are reproduced on all copies. Neither the Government nor LANS makes any warranty, express or implied, or assumes any liability or responsibility for the use of this information.”
- Turing Machine Model Davey 2012 by Rocky Acosta commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Arttechlaw licensed under CC BY 3.0 creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en
- Animation. 1200 iterations of the ‘Rule 110’ Automata commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Animation%2E_1200_… by Mr. Heretic licenced under CC BY-SA 3.0 creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en
- Bundesarchiv Bild183-R57262, Werner Heisenberg commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bundesarchiv_Bild1… by an unknown author (Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-R57262) licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 DE creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/de/deed.en
- Turing in 1935 commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Turing_in_1935.jpg by Tomipelegrin licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en
- Gospers glider gun commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gospers_glider_gun… by Lucas Vieira commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:LucasVB licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en

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The Last Theory lasttheory.com/ is hosted by Mark Jeffery markjeffery.com/ founder of the Open Web Mind www.openwebmind.com/

Prefer to listen to the audio? Search for The Last Theory in your podcast player, or listen at lasttheory.com/podcast/041-john-von-neumann-and-th…

The full article is at lasttheory.com/article/john-von-neumann-and-the-ar…

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All Comments (21)
  • @Samson373
    During his time, Von Neumann was widely regarded (at least among physicists and mathematicians) as the most intelligent person in the world.
  • @JackLWalsh
    As a mathematician (PhD), I’ve always considered Von Neumann one of my most important influences. Luckily I even won a mathematics award at my university known as the Von Neumann Award in my undergraduate degree. I’m utterly shocked that most people don’t know anything about this brilliant man. In light of the success of the Oppenheimer film, perhaps somebody should make a biopic about Von Neumann.
  • @unicaller1
    Von Neumann was a human super computer. It is crazy how many different areas of math and science the contributed too. So a general purpose super computer......
  • @koczeka
    As a Hungarian I am very proud of him, also involved in DNA, whether forecast, torpedoes, etc. Probably one of the smartest men ever walked on our planet. When Nobel price winter fellow Hungarian Jenő Wigner was asked how it was working with so many genius like Fermi, Heisenberg, Einstein, Leó Szilárd, etc. he answered he only knew one genius: Johnny Von Naumann.
  • @timgallagher1041
    In my world ( digital signal processing, computation and information theory ) he is extremely well known and respected The stories of his intellect are legend
  • @thewalkingjoke3843
    What was special about Von Neumann is that it seemed like his mind was almost limitless. He could do complex calculations in his head almost instantly and could recall entire books (and even translate them perfectly on the spot!). He may not have been the typical genius that is depicted having a grandious vision or having the extreme intuition of Einstein, but I’m fairly certain there has been no other human in history with the same processing power as he had. Just imagine if Von Neumann had the same creativity as Einstein…
  • @WaynoGur
    One of the greatest minds of the 20th Century. Basic Von Neumann architecture is used in every computer on the planet.
  • @esra_erimez
    The historical importance of this video simply cannot be over stated.
  • @TheSalaho1
    He literally proved the first chess search function minimax. The algorithm is a simple DFS yet the proof is so advanced.
  • @santoshbhandari1310
    I really loved how you connected different pieces spread across various domains. Well presented.
  • @AldrianCG
    I ended up here because I’m reading Benjamín Labatut’s novel “the Maniac”. Thank you, really nice video. All you mentioned comes on said book.
  • @stevevitka7442
    He also told Claude Shannon to call his quantification of information, "entropy"
  • @krunoslavregvar477
    I heard of him, he was famous mathematician, one of firstly, if not first, wrote axiomatic set theory, ~1946. with group of engineers at one of Ivy League U he constructed electronic computer, which is father or grandfather of all today's (PCs & servers) digital computers. Anyway, he was great american mathematician of hungary ancestry, born in Austro-Hungarian empire 1903.y. as Yanosh (Janos in Hungarian).
  • @heyyoumewe
    The way ideas are brought up and exposed in this video is really creative and well executed, appreciated
  • @appidydafoo
    Excellent presentation, thank you very much.
  • @tgunersel
    Thank you so much for your wonderful presentation :)
  • @esra_erimez
    Thank you for this excellent video. Well done.