Questions tagged [von-neumann]

John von Neumann (1903-1957) was a Hungarian-American mathematician, physicist, computer scientist, engineer and polymath.

Filter by
Sorted by
Tagged with
0 votes
0 answers
124 views

John von Neumann's thinking process

I'm interested in John von Neumann these days. So I searched this file. And I read books The Man from the Future and John Von Neumann: The Scientific Genius Who Pioneered the Modern Computer, Game ...
pokssin's user avatar
  • 75
0 votes
0 answers
91 views

Technical analysis of von Neumann's contributions to computing?

I have seen the book The Annotated Turing and I found it quite nice to understand the ideas of Alan Turing. Are there similar books for understanding von Neumann's ideas in computing?
Reine Abstraktion's user avatar
0 votes
2 answers
1k views

Did John von Neumann solve any unsolved problem in mathematics?

I have searched and examined legendary stories of the problem-solving skills of von Neumann in mathematics. With George Polya With Dantzig Maybe there are other stories showing that he is a great ...
SG Kwon's user avatar
  • 31
2 votes
0 answers
231 views

Did John von Neumann make any comments about the Many Worlds Interpretation of Hugh Everett?

I was having a discussion with a physicist about Many Worlds Interpretation and he told me that von Neumann like the idea of having multiple worlds in quantum mechanics. When I asked him about more ...
vengaq's user avatar
  • 297
2 votes
1 answer
134 views

Who first proposed the idea of "resolution of the identity"?

Who first proposed the idea of "resolution of the identity" as used in the functional calculus of self-adjoint operators? Was it von Neumann? In Japanese, it translates as "resolution ...
enjin2000's user avatar
2 votes
1 answer
277 views

Did von Neumann consider the brain an analogue computer?

In this article, about an unfinished book by von Neumann (he died in 1957 before he could finish it), one can read: After stating that he himself is neither a neurologist nor a psychiatrist, but a ...
Deschele Schilder's user avatar
4 votes
0 answers
81 views

von Neumann vignette on early computer usage

I'm looking for a vignette about von Neumann. My recollection is as follows but my google-fu is not bringing up anything. von Neumann, having prodigious mathematical capacity even of the most mundane ...
Rusi's user avatar
  • 141
2 votes
0 answers
78 views

Background on the Stone-von Neumann theorem

I'm a mathematician. I'm required to give a lecture on the Stone-von Neumann theorem. I already have all the mathematical details figured out, but I wish to make the lecture more interesting by giving ...
Khal's user avatar
  • 129
1 vote
1 answer
170 views

Is there any book or site where John von Neumann's collected philosophical writings are presented?

I was wondering if von Neuman has any philosophical writings beside his writings on the relation of computers to the human mind and vice versa.
GEP's user avatar
  • 1,506
5 votes
2 answers
2k views

How did von Neumann come up with his merge sort algorithm?

Since merge sort is the first $O(n \log n)$ time general purpose sorting algorithm I find it rather surprising that it was discovered without having any obvious conceptual predecessors. Are there any ...
GEP's user avatar
  • 1,506
9 votes
0 answers
598 views

Did John Von Neumann hate pure mathematics that became too abstract?

John von Neumann wrote the following in his essay The Mathematician: As a mathematical discipline travels far from its empirical source, or still more, if it is a second and third generation only ...
user4281's user avatar
  • 615
0 votes
1 answer
202 views

Did John von Neumann ever go to any Nordic Country? Did Eugene Paul Wigner ever go to any other Nordic country apart from Sweden?

I am researching the presence of important scientists in Nordic countries — Iceland, Norway, Denmark, Sweden and Finland. I was hoping that someone could help me since I've not been able to find ...
vinsalm's user avatar
6 votes
1 answer
245 views

The minimax theorem from 1928 to 1956

Minimax theorems are beautiful saddle-point results regarding conditions on a function $f$ under which $\max_x \min_y f(x,y) = \min_y \max_x f(x,y)$. In the common "normal form" game case, $x$ and $y$ ...
usul's user avatar
  • 161
6 votes
2 answers
2k views

Why didn't John von Neumann win the Turing Award, Fields Medal or Nobel Prize?

From what I've read in Wikipedia, John von Neumann made a stupendous number of contributions to economics, computer science and mathematics. Why, then, didn't he receive a top award in any of these ...
Siddhartha's user avatar