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Comment by corvus-cornix | Hacker News Reader

They never mention the economist he collaborated with in inventing game theory: Oskar Morgenstern. There were also collaborators involved in developing "Von Neumann" architecture. He was just the biggest name involved. He was a genius, but there's some politics at work in who is remembered for collaborative intellectual work.

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Did you read it? They do mention Morgernstern multiple times in the article. Morgernstern's name is mentioned 10 times in the article. For instance:

>"This is most evident in his treatment of von Neumann’s pioneering work in the social sciences, the 1944 book Theory of Games and Economic Behavior, written in collaboration with the economist Oskar Morgenstern."

> there's some politics at work in who is remembered

politics, or do people have natural a bias towards giving attribution to a lone genius?

von Neumann wasn't a lone genius, he was a god, the only "human" completely beyond the bounds of our comprehension. Accepting that is the first required step to understanding his contributions to the modern world.

If anything you're losing some understanding when you try to see him as something other than human. Absolutely outstanding, sure, but not something else entirely.

Don't take it from me:

> 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."

He's certainly not alone in that opinion either, cf. Oppenheimer and the rest of "the martians" [1]; I've read several books about him, and the history of mathematics in general.

Of course we may disagree, but...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Martians_(scientists)

Here is Eugene Wigner on Einstein and von Neumann

> I have known a great many intelligent people in my life. I knew Planck, von Laue and Heisenberg. Paul Dirac was my brother in law; Leo Szilard and Edward Teller have been among my closest friends; and Albert Einstein was a good friend, too. But none of them had a mind as quick and acute as Jansci [John] von Neumann. I have often remarked this in the presence of those men and no one ever disputed me.

But Einstein's understanding was deeper even than von Neumann's. His mind was both more penetrating and more original than von Neumann's. And that is a very remarkable statement. Einstein took an extraordinary pleasure in invention. Two of his greatest inventions are the Special and General Theories of Relativity; and for all of Jansci's brilliance, he never produced anything as original.

This quote really goes to the heart of it. I think he was being fairly precise here in the use speed and acuity, contrasted with insight and originality. Our brains just like the rest of our bodies have a lot of different capabilities. I don't think most of us would find it particularly meaningful to compare the strongest lifter with the fastest runner, yet related to intelligence people do this sort of thing all the time. This quote seems a better informed view.

Sure, as a metaphorical device to underline his exceptional contributions to science/mathematics/etc. and lightning-quick intellect. But not in seriousness, as a "first required step to understanding", like you phrased it in your original comment. Maybe I'm just a bit allergic to the almost cult-like behaviour some von Neumann fans show.

This is how I feel about Ramanujan. He seemed to pull mathematical truths, fully formed, out of some parallel dimension connected only to his mind.

I agree he’s a crazy genius, but disagree he’s a different species. I firmly believe that there are a ton of Ramanujans that die in poverty or working at some factory everyday because they just aren’t in the position to prove themselves (or even know that they could be a genius.)

Imagine if Hardy had never received the letter from Ramanujan for whatever reason. Like a regular, run of the mill Royal Mail mistake. Ramanujan would have died in obscurity, with no one understanding his genius.

This was so close to happening I sometime believe he was right that it was the gods working through him.

much of the the physical work for the report on EDVAC was indeed done by others or discovered by them, but his formalisation of it would not have been possible by those individuals.

To even hint that he is somehow undue the reverence he is afforded is wrong and any exploration of his work would easily dispell such notions.

He is mentioned in the book, _The Man from the Future_, which gives the impression that Von Neumann did the heavy lifting their collaboration. It paints a relatively unflattering picture of Morgenstern.

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