John von neumann brief biography

Following a year as a guest lecturer, he was appointed to the faculty. At age 30, he became the youngest professor at the Institute for Advanced Study, in the School of Mathematics, where he was frequently mistaken for a graduate student. In this galaxy of stars, von Neumann radiated excitement. His lectures on Hilbert Space, measure theory, rings of operators called now von Neumann algebrasand continuous geometry, fascinated a large audience.

At the daily afternoon tea, he engaged some in a most lively and stimulating discussion. With obvious delight he explained, clarified, and analyzed problems on the spot and gave help to one and all. Fellow mathematicians and physicists marveled at the speed with which von Neumann could analyze and solve complex problems. During the war, von Neumann's intellect tackled hydrodynamics, ballistics, meteorology, game theory, and statistics, applying mathematical rigor to practical problems in these fields.

He worked on the Manhattan Project and by the latter years of World War II was a consultant to several government committees, moving between groups of scientists in government, university, and industry research laboratories.

John von neumann brief biography: John von Neumann, Hungarian-born

His broad perspective allowed him to envision applications for computers beyond that of speedy calculating devices and he initiated the Electronic Computer Project at the Institute. Von Neumann received his Ph. He simultaneously learned chemistry in Switzerland. Between andhe was a private lecturer in Berlin, Germany. Inthe same year he married Mariette Koevesi and agreed to convert to Catholicism to placate her family, Princeton University invited him to lecture on mathematical physics.

John von neumann brief biography: John von Neumann was a Hungarian

While at Princeton, the founders of the newly created Institute for Advanced Study asked him to accept a chair in mathematics. John is often credited with in the contribution of the study of algorithms. He also founded the field of continuous geometry which followed his work on rings of operators. John Von Neumann was married twice. Inhe married Mariette Kovesi just before migrating to the U.

They had one child. Inthe couple divorced and one year later, he married Klara Dan. John had a wide range of cultural interests; he loved ancient history and was also fluent in Latin and ancient Greek. He was also a social person who enjoyed throwing large parties at his house in Princeton. Despite being a bad driver, he enjoyed driving and was occasionally arrested for causing accidents.

Inhe was diagnosed with cancer. One biographer speculated that this illness was caused by his presence at the Bikini nuclear tests in At academic conferences, he would find himself pointed out as a young genius. Veblen invited von Neumann to Princeton to lecture on quantum theory in In von Neumann became a visiting lecturer at Princeton University, being appointed professor there in Between and von Neumann taught at Princeton but this was not one of his strong points [ 8 ] :- His fluid line of thought was difficult for those less gifted to follow.

He was notorious for dashing out equations on a small portion of the available blackboard and erasing expressions before students could copy them. In contrast, however, he had an ability to explain complicated ideas in physics [ 3 ] :- For a man to whom complicated mathematics presented no difficulty, he could explain his conclusions to the uninitiated with amazing lucidity.

After a talk with him one always came away with a feeling that the problem was really simple and transparent. During the first years that he was in the United States, von Neumann continued to return to Europe during the summers. Until he still held academic posts in Germany but resigned these when the Nazis came to power. Unlike many others, von Neumann was not a political refugee but rather he went to the United States mainly because he thought that the prospect of academic positions there was better than in Germany.

In von Neumann became co-editor of the Annals of Mathematics and, two years later, he became co-editor of Compositio Mathematica. He held both these editorships until his death. Von Neumann and Marietta had a daughter Marina in but their marriage ended in divorce in After marrying, they sailed to the United States and made their home in Princeton.

There von Neumann lived a rather unusual lifestyle for a top mathematician. He had always enjoyed parties [ 8 ] :- Parties and nightlife held a special appeal for von Neumann. While teaching in Germany, von Neumann had been a denizen of the Cabaret-era Berlin nightlife circuit. Ulam summarises von Neumann's work in [ 35 ]. He writes:- In his youthful work, he was concerned not only with mathematical logic and the axiomatics of set theory, but, simultaneously, with the substance of set theory itself, obtaining interesting results in measure theory and the theory of real variables.

John von neumann brief biography: John von Neumann was.

It was in this period also that he began his classical work on quantum theory, the mathematical foundation of the theory of measurement in quantum theory and the new statistical mechanics. Van Hove writes in [ 36 ] :- Quantum mechanics was very fortunate indeed to attract, in the very first years after its discovery inthe interest of a mathematical genius of von Neumann's stature.

As a result, the mathematical framework of the theory was developed and the formal aspects of its entirely novel rules of interpretation were analysed by one single man in two years - Self-adjoint algebras of bounded linear operators on a Hilbert space, closed in the weak operator topologywere introduced in by von Neumann in a paper in Mathematische Annalen.

Kadison explains in [ 22 ] :- His interest in ergodic theorygroup representations and quantum mechanics contributed significantly to von Neumann's realisation that a theory of operator algebras was the next important stage in the development of this area of mathematics. J Dixmierincalled them "von Neumann algebras" in his monograph Algebras of operators in Hilbert space von Neumann algebras.

In the second half of the 's and the early s von Neumann, working with his collaborator F J Murray, laid the foundations for the study of von Neumann algebras in a fundamental series of papers. However von Neumann is known for the wide variety of different scientific studies. Ulam explains [ 35 ] how he was led towards game theory :- Von Neumann's awareness of results obtained by other mathematicians and the inherent possibilities which they offer is astonishing.