The Scientist Who Invented the Future

Newsthink is produced and presented by Cindy Pom

Thank you to our Patrons, including:
John & Becki Johnston
Igli Laci

Chapters
0:00 Introduction
0:27 Childhood
1:20 University years
2:20 Unifying quantum mechanics
3:23 Invitation to America
4:34 Nazi Party rises to power
4:56 Life in America at the Institute for Advanced Study
5:36 Worries about looming war in Europe
6:14 Marriage and divorce
7:00 Developing the atomic bomb
9:34 Developing the early computer (ENIAC and EDVAC)
11:50 Game theory and nuclear deterrence
15:00 Self-replicating machines and later life
15:58 The future
17:08 Sponsor, Brilliant

Select images sourced from Alamy and Associated Press

Sources:
1930s images of Nazi Germany:

[Newsthink]

*What other biographies would you like to watch?*

[artdehls]

"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

[mamusichmilan]

I am a Hungarian living in Hungary. Von Neumann was the neighbor and mentor of my maternal grandmother's kid brother. He became a physicist and an electrical engineer and a university professor.

[ConfucianScholar]

If you visit the wikipedia article on von Neumann look at the part that lists his contributions. The list is ridiculously long and includes many fields, such as Economics, multiple fields of engineering, military science, physics, chemistry, biology and social science.

[petergibson]

I have always been in total awe of John Von Neumann.
John Von Neumann and Leonardo da Vinci were two humans whose mental abilities bordered on the Super-Human.

[cabbytabby]

His “exceptional skills in mathematics”? I’m sensing an upcoming a Brilliant ad read! 😊

[TheBlackManMythLegend]

that guy was in a class of his own. I watched a documentary on him. He was sad when he could no longer do that things that he loved the most: Think. ( when he was closer to death and his brain was attacked. )

[MrBlaDiBla]

Wow, as a computer science major, I knew about his work in that field.
But I did not know the full expanse of his knowledge and scientific contributions.

[AdvantestInc]

Fascinating overview of John von Neumann's contributions! His impact on computing and mathematics is truly unparalleled.

[simplyme]

I design verification protocols for quantum networks. They are the foundation for the so hyped quantum internet and have applications all over quantum computing.
What I use as fundamentals and did not derive myself comes directly from Von Neumann - his density matrix formalism.
And again, whenever quantum computing is concerned, those old principles from long ago still hold. Mathematics is immortal.
I don't know how often the old stuff reappears in my daily life. I can read papers from the 1930s and they are still as relevant and accurate now as they were back then.
I love understanding the fundamentals of the systems and machines that I use and control. Understanding a computer in the last detail, down to its very last bit and using symmetry to make the algorithms more efficient. Old stuff rarely gets old and so many ideas coming to fruition now are truly old in their core.

[AashutoshYadav-yvxk]

One time a teacher wrote an unsolve problem on blackboard and after five minutes johnny raise his hand and gave answers with detail correctly thats shows his computational speeds and that teacher himself was one of the greatest mathmaticians of his time

[ivlivs.c]

I came here after watching your recent video "Why So Many Great Scientists Come From Hungary." Loved both of these videos. Just subscribed :)

[carrickrichards]

British scientists were involved in building the shaped charges to Neumann's design and my dad helped with the microswitches that timed their detonation to the necessary precision. Secrecy prevented open acknoweldgement but the specs were specific enough to be telling. Eniac developed separately from Bletchly Park's superior Collosus, developed by Tommy Flower under Max Newman (not to be confused)

[MeschKaiser]

*If you are not in the financial market space right now, you are making a huge mistake. I understand that it could be due to ignorance, but if you want to make your money work for you.... prevent inflation*

[mr.boomguy]

Sound like a man who lived to his fullest potential, even when his life was cut short

[Aaron-xndg]

He didn't convert to Catholicism on his deathbed, he converted to Catholicism in his late 20s and remained so until his death receiving last rites.

[Josue-fhky]

I love your videos, everything from the topics to the music to the visuals! Keep up the great work! Who does your editing, and do you have any recommendations on how to find a quality editor for an aspiring YouTube creator?

[jimparsons]

Back in the day, several of my Profs were in a habit of praising von Neumann.

[jimsmedley]

As the wise and brilliant Danish mathmatician, Piet Hien, observed:
When people always try to take
the very smallest piece of cake
How can it also always be
that that's the piece that's left for me?

[witvrouwmanuel]

Always appreciated your videos. Thank you.