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A Mathematician with Mysteries: Von Neumann


For many people, mathematicians are just boring people dealing with numbers.

Neumann would have been a lot of fun if this comment had been lived. Neumann's life, as one of the greatest mathematicians of this century, has been a pioneer in the study of a book on atomic bombs and rockets, a review of poker and other games of chance, and the development of high-speed electronics, in addition to the excellent contributions to pure mathematics.

I wouldn't call it all boring!

John von Neumann was born in 1903 in Budapest, Hungary. His extraordinary mathematical skills were evident when he was six years old, and during the two decades of his education, he became known with the nickname "The Wonderful Child." It was his photographic memory that was more of a math skill than his people.

The years after secondary education led John von Neumann to Germany and Switzerland to seek excellent scientific education. After studying chemistry at the University of Berlin from 1921 to 1923 he went on to pursue a degree in chemical engineering at the Technical College in Switzerland. Finally, in 1926, he received his PhD in mathematics from the University of Budapest.

As soon as he finished his studies in Budapest, the young mathematician was awarded a Rockefeller scholarship at the University of Göttingen. Here, at the age of twenty-three, Von Neumann published his first masterpiece on The Fundamentals of Mathematics şah of Quantum Mechanics. This work was very important for the understanding of the quantum theory on which all atomic and nuclear physics was built.

When Neumann was in Berlin, he began to study poker. In particular, this game attracted its attention because it was not only a luck factor in the game, but also the strategy of the player. Could such a game be expressed in math terms?



This search led him to develop the “theory of games” that brought a new field to mathematical studies. Von Neumann's approach could be applied not only to games of chance and strategy, but also to important areas such as economics, military strategy and sociology.

Kabul The theory of games bir von Neumann was accepted as a work of mathematical art immediately, although it was first published in 1928, when he was only twenty-five years old. Since then, there has been no significant change in the basic ideas in the work. The theory received applause when applied in 1944 by economist Oskar Morgenstem to economic structures. Oskar Morgenstem and von Neumann published the results in that year's “Theory of Games and Economic Attitude isi.

In 1930, von Neumann felt that Europe was approaching a tragedy. When he received his offer from Princeton University in the United States, he decided to continue his career here.

He was an extraordinary, interesting teacher. Most of the time, his students had trouble tracking him. Even some of his fellow professors could not understand him. He giggled, watching Neumann wield the board squarely to erase the power to make room for the next steps of a problem. "I get it, prove it with wiping."

J. Biglow, H. Goldstine, R. Oppenheimer, J. von Neumann

Then the Second World War broke out, and the new American citizen was suddenly called on to advise the US government on military advice. Before long, von Neumann took the problem of submarine warfare and atomic weapons. His work on the problem of the explosion of the atomic bomb resulted in the completion of the Los Alamos project a year before it was planned.

Although he had hobbies such as attending parties, riding a sports car and writing pointless poems, what he enjoyed the most was his work on challenging subjects. The possibilities of the calculator had fascinated him before the war; now, he was about to begin a thorough review of the possibilities of a calculator-leading expert in computers in the United States.

As a first step in computer research, von Neumann studied psychiatry, consulted neurologists, and discussed hundreds of experts with the human brain. In the end, Neumann's messy creation emerged: MANIAC (Mathematical Analyst, Numerical Integrator and Computure). At that time, MANIAC was able to perform incredibly fast calculations for the future.
NORC (Naval Ordinance Research Computer) was the second study of von Neumann. This skillful machine could give a twenty-four hour weather forecast for a few minutes and record information about the essence of the earth.

Electronic brains, in which Von Neumann has had such an important role in its development, brought dramatic changes that could not be thought of in the twentieth century life; most of the scientific, educational and industrial developments of our time could not have been possible without them.

Von Neumann was often accused of being absentminded by the thought of mathematics. When he was searching his wallet or plane ticket, his friends would starve, the losses they usually had, returning to his office in Princeton. Several times when he was traveling, he had a problem so much so that he called his wife in the first stopover to find out why he was traveling. On the other hand, he was able to concentrate astonishingly as necessary; Most of her work was done while she was listening to music in the living room and she regularly solved problems in crowded restaurants or noisy parties.

In 1953, von Neumann was appointed as the chairman of the commission of scientists and military leaders who were trying to ravage the American guided bullet program. Under his leadership, he started working on the Intercontinental Ballistic Guided projectile (ICBM) project. For months, the government's work on the job had left von Neumann with little time for pure mathematics. Sometimes he makes short-term getaways with his dog who loves to play, or on the contrary, he would sacrifice a night to read about his hobby, the medieval history. However, he never seemed to be far away from mathematics, and even distracted himself by investigating the prime numbers on the plates in his automobile journeys.

In 1954 von Neumann was appointed to the largest level, the Atomic Energy Commission. Von Neumann immediately accepted the position, although the new position had left him with a very limited time to force him to move to Washington DC and to investigate. Ları All the scientists who are familiar with atomic energy issues must take part in the task of putting in charge of administrative responsibility, ın he told a newspaper reporter.

A few months after moving to Washington, von Neumann was seriously disturbed and told that he had very short lives. In order to complete one or two projects, he gave himself to work entirely in vain in vain. Everything was useless, and in February 1957, von Neumann died.

If Von Neumann's extraordinary achievements are revised, it seems impossible to believe that they are the product of a man's mind. The physicist Hans Bethe biçimnen's words probably explain von Neumann's genius in the best possible way.

”From time to time, I wonder if a brain like Von Neumann is more than a human brain.“

Source: Frances Benson Stonaker

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