Was hoping someone would ask this so thanks. As I mentioned in the post, I came across the name first in high school. Then again at university. I was studying physics but an old friend, who was studying economics, was besotted with game theory. In the 15 years or so I was in science journalism, his name kept popping up more and more often but in wildly different contexts… interpretations of quantum mechanics (more interest in that because of quantum computing), nuclear strategy, internet commerce, AI etc So one day I just pulled a bunch of random pop science books off my shelf at home (eg Chaos, Consciousness Explained etc) and I found he was in the index of about half. I read the biography by Macrae but it doesn’t really engage with the science so I thought there must be some book that tells me what von Neumann did that means he’s getting talked about so much. It was fascinating to me that a mathematician could have so much impact outside maths. Most popular maths books and bios tell you about how great maths is for its own sake, but here was a mathematician taking on really big real world questions. I don’t read scientific biography much though I liked A Beautiful Mind (the book NOT the film) and American Prometheus so I deliberately set out to write about von Neumann ideas, lacing bits of his life story through that and adding historical context, and a bit about von Neumann’s interactions with others when relevant (like John Nash). So, for the record, it was never meant to be a standard biography. Some people felt cheated by that, some love it. I wrote a book about a mathematical genius that I’d want to read, which takes his ideas seriously. I’ve wanted to write a book since I was like 5 and I’d had ideas before. Many years ago I pitched a book about the hygiene hypothesis to a respected agent and was snubbed. Several years later Ed Yong wrote a book along the lines of the one I pitched (though he did a much better job of it than I could have). So with the von Neumann book, when publishers were interested I thought—it’s now or never…