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Comment by hegzploit | Hacker News Reader

Jon vom Neumann also comes to mind when thinking about brilliant people from the past century.

There's a new bio of von Neumann "The Man from the Future: The Visionary Life of John von Neumann" coming out in February in the US. [0] If you're impatient you can order a copy from Amazon's UK site where it's been available since October.

[0] https://www.amazon.com/Man-Future-Visionary-Life-Neumann/dp/...

> Nobel Laureate Hans Bethe could not comprehend von Neumann's incredible intellect: "I have sometimes wondered whether a brain like von Neumann's does not indicate a species superior to that of man."

There are plenty of smart humans, but John von Neumann was something else entirely. Like the author of the article concludes about Shannon, I wonder if we will ever see another "human" mind like that again.

>There are two types of genius. Ordinary geniuses do great things, but they leave you room to believe that you could do the same if only you worked hard enough. Then there are magicians, and you can have no idea how they do it. Feynman was a magician. —Hans Bethe

Seems like Bethe hung out with some elevated company.

Backyard BBQ’s and cocktail parties must have been phenomenal. Just to be a fly on the wall. Wow.

I was chatting about him with a friend and pointing out all the things in the room influenced by him. Of course he led a pretty normal life, so no one is going to make a "Beautiful Mind" type movie about him. Other than playing his record player too loud in his office and having wild martini happy hours with his wife and friends, I can't find anything controversial about him.

Driving around while reading the newspaper and getting into frequent crashes, and advocating for the immediate nuclear annihilation of Russia, are at least 2 other controversial pastimes.

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