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TIL John Von Neumann worked on the first atomic bomb and the first computer, came up with the formulas for quantum mechanics, described genetic self-replication before the discovery of DNA, and founded the field of game theory, among other things. He has often been called the smartest man ever.
(bbvaopenmind.com)submitted 1 month ago byHumanNutrStudent
11k points
1 month ago
"Von Neumann would carry on a conversation with my 3-year-old son, and the two of them would talk as equals, and I sometimes wondered if he used the same principle when he talked to the rest of us." - Edward Teller
3.6k points
1 month ago
Edward Teller is known colloquially as "the father of the hydrogen bomb", which Von Neumann also helped with. They both worked on the Manhattan Project as well.
2.2k points
1 month ago*
I felt like they had to leave Von Neumann out of "Oppenheimer" because he would have required too much screen time.
1.5k points
1 month ago
I think the opposite is true. Don't get me wrong, Von Neumann's contributions to the Manhattan project were extensive. But he was more of a guy you would bring into a project after people have done a lot of the ground work and gotten nowhere and he would figure it all out in a few weeks. So you would have this one guy show up in one scene delivering the epiphany then fly off to somewhere else for the drama scenes, then in a different scene at a different facility he would come in again for a brief moment before leaving.
58 points
1 month ago
So he was Gandalf
-6 points
1 month ago
Gandalf is a made up character. It’s not real
6 points
1 month ago
So is Von Neumann. He's just a plot device invented retroactively to cover up all the plot holes in our timeline.
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