Biographies of Von Neumann. Was he a new species?

From: John K Clark (johnkc@well.com)
Date: Thu Jan 30 1997 - 09:27:23 MST


-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----

Several have asked be about biographies of Von Neumann so I thought I'd send
this to the list. I've read two, "John Von Neumann and Norbert Wiener"
by Steve J Heims, and "John von Neumann" by Norman Macrae. The Heims book
goes into a little more detail about his work and also talks about Wiener,
another very interesting man, but I think the Macrae book is better written.

To give you an idea of the of the very high regard Von Neumann (everybody
called him "Johnny") is still held in, I find this blurb by Nobel Prize
winner Hans Bethe on the dust jacket of Macrae's book:

"I always thought Johnny's brain indicated that he belonged to a new species,
 an Evolution beyond man. Macrae shows us in a lively way how this brain was
 nurtured and then left its great imprint on the world."

                                       John K Clark johnkc@well.com

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: 2.6.i

iQCzAgUBMvDJT303wfSpid95AQGaQgTwtusOeimQ7iE0x2gYaesG97SyCo93PXGT
kqCusWNajMkpqJk5qOjzsurRcRhHXJ6PG+Idil3pOuy9dGev66rvGc6P4hhkF4fa
UpgW7eygMAjbrU3ufWUz8phz5RIfJak7YtigxArTv4eDMjpHqZ5SrGnBe4HcYQHj
YaP/xY8dpDBg3JMOZEUjIeb5scvWrnOzI4wO78h12uvicSxxeFo=
=jjTD
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----



This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Nov 01 2002 - 14:44:06 MST