The Unparalleled Genius of John von Neumann

[LiberalArkie]

It is indeed supremely difficult to effectively refute the claim that John von Neumann is likely the most intelligent person who has ever lived. By the time of his death in 1957 at the modest age of 53, the Hungarian polymath had not only revolutionized several subfields of mathematics and physics but also made foundational contributions to pure economics and statistics and taken key parts in the invention of the atomic bomb, nuclear energy and digital computing.

Known now as “the last representative of the great mathematicians”, von Neumann’s genius was legendary even in his own lifetime. The sheer breadth of stories and anecdotes about his brilliance, from Nobel Prize-winning physicists to world-class mathematicians abound:

”You know, Herb, Johnny can do calculations in his head ten times as fast as I can. And I can do them ten times as fast as you can, so you can see how impressive Johnny is” — Enrico Fermi (Nobel Prize in Physics, 1938)

“One had the impression of a perfect instrument whose gears were machined to mesh accurately to a thousandth of an inch.” — Eugene Wigner (Nobel Prize in Physics, 1963)

“I have sometimes wondered whether a brain like von Neumann’s does not indicate a species superior to that of man” — Hans Bethe (Nobel Prize in Physics, 1967)

Snip

https://medium.com/cantors-paradise/the-unparalleled-genius-of-john-von-neumann-791bb9f42a2d

[lapfog_1]

1. NASA Ames NAS facility (NASA's supercomputer site)

named the large HPC machines after mathematicians... The support machines were named after famous aviators and test pilots.

One of our early Supercomputers was named after John von Neumann.

I had the honor of naming some of the support machines, specifically Chuck (Chuck Yeager), Scott (Scott Carpenter) and Pancho (after Pancho Barnes... one of the very few Women test pilots and the owner of the Happy Bottom Riding Club where many of the US aviation records were set.

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

[RichardRay]

2. The Von Neuman Bridge...

...still defines how fast most computer operations can be accomplished.