John von Neumann

Från Unix.se, den fria unixresursen.

John von Neumann, född 28 december 1903, död 8 februari 1957, matematiker, geni, och ungrare som under första halvan av 1900-talet gjorde banbrytande arbete inom bla. datalogi, kvantfysik, automatateori, ekonomi, artificiellt liv, atombomben, evolutionsbiologi och spelteori.

Liksom Einstein, Gödel, Turing mfl. var han stundtals vid Princeton, USA.

Citat

• "In mathematics you don't understand things. You just get used to them."
• "There is an infinite set A that is not too big."
• "It would appear that we have reached the limits of what it is possible to achieve with computer technology, although one should be careful with such statements, as they tend to sound pretty silly in 5 years." [ Sades 1949 ]
• "There's no sense in being precise when you don't even know what you're talking about."
• "If people do not believe that mathematics is simple, it is only because they do not realize how complicated life is."

• "[..] a problem which occured to Enrico Fermi one day at Los Alamos: where are They? If there are intelligent aliens out there in the universe, why aren't they here yet? A million years is nothing, as the universe reckons things, but, judging from our own track-record, a species only that much older than us would have technology which would blow our minds, pretty close to limits set by physical laws. Leo Szilard is supposed to have answered Fermi: 'Maybe they're already here, and you just call them Hungarians.'"