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John von Neumann (/ v ɒ n ˈ n ɔɪ m ən / von NOY-mən; Hungarian: Neumann János Lajos [ˈnɒjmɒn ˈjaːnoʃ ˈlɒjoʃ]; December 28, 1903 – February 8, 1957) was a Hungarian and American mathematician, physicist, computer scientist, engineer and polymath.
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- Overview
- Early life and education
- European career, 1921–30
John von Neumann (born December 28, 1903, Budapest, Hungary—died February 8, 1957, Washington, D.C., U.S.) Hungarian-born American mathematician. As an adult, he appended von to his surname; the hereditary title had been granted his father in 1913. Von Neumann grew from child prodigy to one of the world’s foremost mathematicians by his mid-twenties...
Von Neumann grew up in an affluent, highly assimilated Jewish family. His father, Miksa Neumann (Max Neumann), was a banker, and his mother, born Margit Kann (Margaret Kann), came from a family that had prospered selling farm equipment. Von Neumann showed signs of genius in early childhood: he could joke in Classical Greek and, for a family stunt, ...
Von Neumann commenced his intellectual career at a time when the influence of David Hilbert and his program of establishing axiomatic foundations for mathematics was at a peak. A paper von Neumann wrote while still at the Lutheran Gymnasium (“The Introduction of Transfinite Ordinals,” published 1923) supplied the now-conventional definition of an ordinal number as the set of all smaller ordinal numbers. This neatly avoids some of the complications raised by Georg Cantor’s transfinite numbers. Von Neumann’s “An Axiomatization of Set Theory” (1925) commanded the attention of Hilbert himself. From 1926 to 1927 von Neumann did postdoctoral work under Hilbert at the University of Göttingen. The goal of axiomatizing mathematics was defeated by Kurt Gödel’s incompleteness theorems, a barrier that was understood immediately by Hilbert and von Neumann. (See also mathematics, foundations of: Gödel.)
Von Neumann took positions as a Privatdozent (“private lecturer”) at the Universities of Berlin (1927–29) and Hamburg (1929–30). The work with Hilbert culminated in von Neumann’s book The Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Mechanics (1932), in which quantum states are treated as vectors in a Hilbert space. This mathematical synthesis reconciled the seemingly contradictory quantum mechanical formulations of Erwin Schrödinger and Werner Heisenberg. Von Neumann also claimed to prove that deterministic “hidden variables” cannot underlie quantum phenomena. This influential result pleased Niels Bohr and Heisenberg and played a strong role in convincing physicists to accept the indeterminacy of quantum theory. In contrast, the result dismayed Albert Einstein, who refused to abandon his belief in determinism. (Ironically, Irish-born physicist John Stewart Bell demonstrated in the mid-1960s that von Neumann’s proof was flawed; Bell then fixed the proof’s shortcomings, reaffirming von Neumann’s conclusion that hidden variables were unnecessary. See also quantum mechanics: Hidden variables.)
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By his mid-twenties, von Neumann found himself pointed out as a wunderkind at conferences. (He claimed that mathematical powers start to decline at age 26, after which experience can conceal the deterioration for a time.) Von Neumann produced a staggering succession of pivotal papers in logic, set theory, group theory, ergodic theory, and operator theory. Herman Goldstine and Eugene Wigner noted that, of all the principal branches of mathematics, it was only in topology and number theory that von Neumann failed to make an important contribution.
In 1928 von Neumann published “Theory of Parlor Games,” a key paper in the field of game theory. The nominal inspiration was the game of poker. Game theory focuses on the element of bluffing, a feature distinct from the pure logic of chess or the probability theory of roulette. Though von Neumann knew of the earlier work of the French mathematician Émile Borel, he gave the subject mathematical substance by proving the mini-max theorem. This asserts that for every finite, two-person zero-sum game, there is a rational outcome in the sense that two perfectly logical adversaries can arrive at a mutual choice of game strategies, confident that they could not expect to do better by choosing another strategy. (See also game theory: The von Neumann–Morgenstern theory.) In games like poker, the optimal strategy incorporates a chance element. Poker players must bluff occasionally—and unpredictably—in order to avoid exploitation by a savvier player.
John Von Neumann built a solid framework for quantum mechanics. He also worked in game theory, studied what are now called von Neumann Algebras, and was one of the pioneers of computer science. View nine larger pictures.
Described as the scientific genius who pioneered the modern computer, game theory, nuclear deterrence, and more, John von Neumann illuminated the fields of pure and applied mathematics, computer science, physics, and economics.
John von Neumann (1903–1957) was a Hungarian-American mathematician, physicist, computer scientist, engineer and polymath. He had perhaps the widest coverage of any mathematician of his time, integrating pure and applied sciences and making major contributions to many fields, including mathematics, physics, economics, computing, and statistics.
John von Neumann (December 28. 1903 – February 8. 1957) was a Hungarian-American mathematician and physicist. He contributed to many fields, including: Set theory; Functional analysis; Quantum mechanics; Ergodic theory; Continuous geometry; Economics; Game theory; Computer science; Numerical analysis; Systems theory; Statistics
Dec 18, 2021 · Von Neumann was one of a group of brilliant Hungarian mathematicians and physicists, including Leo Szilard, Edward Teller and Eugene Wigner, born around the turn of the century, who emigrated to the US and in many cases worked on the Manhattan Project.
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