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In succinctly summarising the intellectual genius of John von Neumann, Hungarian Mathematician Rózsa Péter remarked: “Other mathematicians prove what they can; von Neumann proves what he wants.” Von Neumann is undisputably one of the greatest thinkers to have ever lived. His influence is so encompassing that his vision continues to shape scientific discourse in myriad fields even decades after his passing. By the time he was consumed by bone cancer in 1957, when he was only fifty-four, Neumann had left behind a stupendous legacy of scientific achievements, many of which would remain unparalleled only because of their seraphic fungibility spanning space and time, and disciplines!
The game theory which Neumann established now permeates the realm of cryptocurrency. Neumann’s atomic fusion theory underpins the contemporaneous development of green and clean energy; his vision of a ‘self-reproducing automata’ represents the beating heart of Artificial Intelligence; every electronic gadget from smartphones to supercomputers are in some form or the other children of ‘von Neumann architecture’; his analysis of the structure of self-replication even preceded the discovery of the structure of DNA by James Watson and Francis Crick years after Neumann first conceived the concept. Despite such a phalanx of achievements, the man who deserves to be spoken of in the same breath as Albert Einstein or Kurt Godel is an undeservingly fading figure. Science writer Ananyo Bhattacharya in his electrifying portrait of von Neumann attempts to right such a wrong, nay a travesty, and does a capital job of it!
Neumann’s domain of research was jaw dropping in terms of the sheer breadth that it represented. He pioneered many developments in the realms of physics, economics, biology, sociology, and politics. A man with a super-human memory, Neumann could recite by rote, Edward Gibbon’s tome, History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. With a view to appeasing his obstinate father, who perceived no future in Mathematics, Neumann studied Chemistry in Berlin, while in parallel chasing a doctorate in Mathematics in Budapest. In fact, his academic rigours necessitated frequent commuting between three cities (Zurich, Berlin, and Budapest). He was just eighteen when engaged in such academic calisthenics. Yet he trumped both disciplines by clearing his exams in exemplary fashion.
Neumann spent most of his productive life at the Institute of Advanced Study, at Princeton University. One of his greatest achievements lay in the construction of the ENIAC machine. Frequently cited to be the ‘birth certificate’ of computer science, the ENIAC employed certain instructions written by Neumann that are now recognised to be fundamental by any computer programmer. Neumann posited that data and instructions be kept in a single store so that instructions could be encoded and be amenable for modification by other instructions. This meant that one program could be treated as data by another program. Since then, every computer with a stored programme is known as a von Neumann machine.
The RAND Corporation, in honour of Neumann built its own computer for scientific and engineering calculations and named it JOHNNIAC (John von Neumann Numerical Integrator and Automatic Computer), since the machine was based on the stored-program computer developed by Neumann. For all his achievements, Neumann was also an enigmatic person. Seeped in perpetuity in thoughts about the mysteries of Science, he neglected to spend time with his family. Jet setting to advise government, military and a whole horde of multilateral agencies, Neumann was well and truly the child of Science.
Neumann also possessed a cynical bent of mind. Having experienced the brutality of Bela Kun’s totalitarian regime in Hungary, albeit for a brief time, and scarred by the atrocities inflicted by the Nazis both during the run up to and throughout the course of World War II, Neumann nursed an inveterate hatred for totalitarianism. He also nursed a brief inclination towards a ‘pre-emptive’ war against the former Soviet Union and was a fervent advocate of and for the Hydrogen bomb. A significant degree of his scientific genius was expended in the development of a nuclear weapon.
But what Neumann favoured more than anything else was a capacity for engaging in uninhibited thinking. In the words of fellow Hungarian American, and acclaimed nuclear physicist, Edward Teller, “when he was dying of cancer, his brain was affected. I think he suffered from this loss more than I have seen any human to suffer in any other circumstances.”
John von Neumann was a true colossus of our times and The Man From The Future is a stirring homage to the genius.