shrubs311 t1_ixm9mre wrote
the one thing i will always remember about von neumann is that von neumann architecture means "programs stored in memory". my computer hardware prof verbally beat this idea into us and said that if we don't remember it on graduation day he'd take away our diploma.
question: what's the most unexpected thing someone could learn about von neumann?
simplicissimusrex OP t1_ixmqt4b wrote
I learned that he was a romantic. Don’t believe me? You can hear his letter to his second wife, Klara Dan, during the second season of the Lost Women of Science podcast. I don’t have it to hand but the intensity of it is something else Take a listen (the series is great) https://www.lostwomenofscience.org/season-2
simplicissimusrex OP t1_ixn1t3c wrote
Oh. Here’s something else I learned that surprised me to an extent. An economics prof pointed this out to me (sadly) after he read the book. Princeton was incredibly racist in von Neumann’s day but von Neumann championed David Blackwell, when most others would not. This raised von Neumann, the man as opposed to the mathematician, to new heights for me when I was told about it. There’s a nice blog post on Blackwell which mentions the impact of this on him: https://stat.illinois.edu/news/2020-07-17/david-h-blackwell-profile-inspiration-and-perseverance
shrubs311 t1_ixnbazj wrote
nice, for a second i thought you were going to say von neumann was racist but thankfully it was the opposite. also i'll check out the later
Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments