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/sci/ - Science & Math


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File: 201 KB, 779x1148, von neumann.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
10834548 No.10834548 [Reply] [Original]

but he is overrated

i can name many mathematicians that were superior to him in the 20th century

Hermann Weyl, David Hilbert, Alexandre Grothendieck

>> No.10834550

einstein

>> No.10834555

Like you all don't pretend what ever it is numberphils have that it isn't Kinematics.

>> No.10834576

>>10834548
He wasn't just good at math though: he was equally good at everything. He even invented the computer you're typing on as a side project to help him do more math.

>> No.10834577
File: 144 KB, 717x536, 1429038585907.gif [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
10834577

>>10834548
look at his wiki page... literally half his life is redacted....

He is the number one big brained super secret governement scientist...

>> No.10834585

>>10834577
W-what if his death was a cover up for moving him to Area 51? I refuse to believe someone as smart as Von Neumann couldn't at least figure out a way to delay his cancer if his entire life depended on it.

>> No.10834588 [DELETED] 

>>10834548
They're all great and you it's pretentious and retarded for you, a fucking nobody who will die in absolute obscurity having contributed nothing of significance to the human race, to quibble over which ones were better than the others.

>> No.10834590

>>10834548 (OP)
They're all great and it's pretentious and retarded for you, a fucking nobody who will die in absolute obscurity having contributed nothing of significance to the human race, to quibble over which ones were better than the others.

>> No.10834604

>>10834585
>I refuse to believe someone as smart as Von Neumann couldn't at least figure out a way to delay his cancer if his entire life depended on it.
It was pancreatic cancer. That's about as bad as it gets in terms of how quickly it will kill you. Maybe if he got into medicine earlier in life he could've figured out how to revolutionize the field of oncology, but even the most brilliant geniuses of all time aren't anyone I would bet money on picking up medicine, mastering it, and exceeding the existing domain experts in under two years (time of his diagnosis to time of death), especially not if the person who needed to do all this was also wasting away and in horrible pain and incapacitation from literally dying during that year and change.
Also if it were a hoax I would expect his attitude towards dying to be more like Einstein's where he was accepting of it and not worried (why worry if you knew it wasn't really happening?). Instead everyone who knew him reported he was terrified of dying. Pretty sad actually to think about someone dying of something that hardcore and inexorable like pancreatic cancer in such a rapid but still drawn out enough to dwell on period of time who was horribly disturbed by it to the very end.
I hope I end up more like Einstein who even refused treatment on the basis that it would be in bad taste to prolong the inevitable. Being able to relax and die peacefully is priceless.

>> No.10834632

>>10834576
apparently was so knowledgeable about ancient history that some expert historian at princeton claimed von neumann knew more than he did. Guy was beyond brilliant.

Though accounts of his last days always struck me as odd, he apparently really freaked out when it came to accepting his mortality