/sci/ - Science & Math

is what people around him said...they all praised him as a god it seems


Hans Bethe: " "I have sometimes wondered whether a brain like von Neumann's does not indicate a species superior to that of man".

Eugene Wigner , "one had the impression of a perfect instrument whose gears were machined to mesh accurately to a thousandth of an inch." and also said "only he was fully awake"

Paul Halmos " "von Neumann's speed was awe-inspiring"

Israel Halperin ""Keeping up with him was ... impossible. The feeling was you were on a tricycle chasing a racing car."

Edward Teller said "he could never keep up with him"

he also said ""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..

Lothar Wolfgang Nordheim " "fastest mind I ever met"

Jacob Bronowski ""He was the cleverest man I ever knew, without exception. He was a genius."

George Polya " "Johnny was the only student I was ever afraid of. If in the course of a lecture I stated an unsolved problem, the chances were he'd come to me at the end of the lecture with the complete solution scribbled on a slip of paper."

Jean Diudonne " "may have been the last representative of a once-flourishing and numerous group, the great mathematicians who were equally at home in pure and applied mathematics and who throughout their careers maintained a steady production in both directions"

Peter Lax "most scintillating intellect of this century"