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The ideas of John von Neumann have had a profound influence on modern mathematics and science. One of the great thinkers of our century, von Neumann initiated major branches of mathematics--from operator algebras to game theory to scientific computing--and had a fundamental impact on such areas as self-adjoint operators, ergodic theory and the foundations of quantum mechanics, and numerical analysis and the design of the modern computer.This volume contains the proceedings of an AMS Symposium in Pure Mathematics, held at Hofstra University, in May 1988. The symposium brought together some of the foremost researchers in the wide range of areas in which von Neumann worked. These articles illustrate the sweep of von Neumann's ideas and thinking and document their influence on contemporary mathematics. In addition, some of those who knew von Neumann when he was alive have presented here personal reminiscences about him. This book is directed to those interested in operator theory, game theory, ergodic theory, and scientific computing, as well as to historians of mathematics and others having an interest in the contemporary history of the mathematical sciences. This book will give readers an appreciation for the workings of the mind of one of the mathematical giants of our time. ... Read more

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In 1940-1941 von Neumann lectured on invariant measures at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton. This book is essentially a written version of those lectures. The lectures began with general measure theory and went on to Haar measure and some of its generalizations. Shizuo Kakutani was at the Institute that year, and he and von Neumann had many conversations on the subject. The conversations revealed facts and produced proofs. Quite a bit of the content of the course, especially toward the end, was discovered a few weeks before it appeared on the blackboard. The original version of these notes was prepared by Paul Halmos, von Neumann's assistant that year. Von Neumann read the handwritten version before it went to the typist and sometimes scribbled comments on the margins; he rewrote most of Chapter 6. This book is the first published version of the original notes. ... Read more

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A biography of the man regarded as the greatest scientist since Einstein moves from the laboratory to the highest levels of government, showing how von Neumann's theories provided the building blocks for the modern computer, the atom bomb, radar, artificial intelligence, and more. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

A Touching Masterpiece for all Scholars and even any Concerned Readers
As a prodigious reader of biographies--of all sorts, but mostly those of persons of science and mathematics (probably read about a hundred)--I feel qualified to say that this biography of John von Neumann is one of the greatest written biographies available today.While the previous reviewers are completely correct in that there is little detailed technical information, the book more than compensates for this in its other aspects.The book is filled with fantastic anecdotes regarding John von Neumann's eccentricities and his extraordinary displays of his unparalleled abilities at mental calculation, problem solving, and memorization.(He was able to memorize entire book chapters verbatim and recite them 15 years later.He could easily multiply two eight digit numbers in his head.And so on...)The few stories that aren't breathtaking are downright hilarious!They often show the jovial side (and sometimes licentious side) of this man, who was one of the single greatest minds of the past millenium.

I particularly recommend this book for all types of quantitative thinkers, or even scholars of any sort who wish to widen their purview of the world.Von Neumann helps to define what it means to be an exemplary scientist.Furthermore, he does a great job of showing the moral responsibilities and gentlemanly behavior required of men of his stature and fame.

In the historical domain, this biography necessarily beats out most others simply von Neumann was so intimately connected with some of the big scientific and political events of the 21st century (Hungarian education and WWI, Quantum Mechanics, the A-bomb and WWII, the Digital Computer, Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles and the Cold War, etc.).I once was talking with a professor about von Neumann, and at a certain point he seemed to think that I thought von Neumann's work was greater than Einstein's.I quicky corrected this.However, upon reflection,I now think that while no single theory of von Neumann's is greater than Einstein's General Relativity, when their work is considered and compared as a whole, von Neumann's entire work will probably have a greater impact on the world as time progresses.The computer, for one, has affected domains of science that Einstein's work doesn't touch.Game Theory and Meterology have similar more global effects.

I highly recommend this book for aspiring young scientists and students of any age.It is inspirational to see such a devoted and passionate man, and in my personal life, von Neumann's example has served as a source of considerable encouragement and as a lesson on the greatness of human potential.This book is the best place to encounter von Neumann's exemplary example.

A comprehensive, non-technical biography of von Neumann.
The major difficulty in writing a scientific biography of von Neumann is that it is impossible to do justice to his tremendous scientific achievements without going into technicalities that are not accessible forthe average reader. Macrae's book deliberately avoids discussingtechnicalities in detail, and while this makes it possible to give a veryreadable, comprehensive picture of von Neumann's life and its personality-- especially in context of the current socio-economic conditions --reading the book one cannot really understand and appreciate why he isregarded by the sharpest minds of this century as a true genius.

An important book about one of the century's major minds.
John Von Neumann's incredible contributions to a vast array of fields are often overlooked and he is identified strictly with respect to one or two (game theory, the computer, and the development of nuclear weapons). ButVon Neumman's contributions spawned such fields as mathematical economicsand artifical intelligence as well as many new kinds of mathematics.Theonly thing lacking in this book is more mathematical detail about his work. ... Read more

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This digital document is an article from Encyclopedia of Philosophy, brought to you by Gale®, a part of Cengage Learning, a world leader in e-research and educational publishing for libraries, schools and businesses.The length of the article is 782 words.The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase.You can view it with any web browser.Explores major marketing and advertising campaigns from 1999-2006. Entries profile recent print, radio, television, billboard and Internet campaigns. Each essay discusses the historical context of the campaign, the target market, the competition, marketing strategy, and the outcome. ... Read more

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In his work on rings of operators in Hilbert space, John von Neumann discovered a new mathematical structure that resembled the lattice system Ln. In characterizing its properties, von Neumann founded the field of continuous geometry.

This book, based on von Neumann's lecture notes, begins with the development of the axioms of continuous geometry, dimension theory, and--for the irreducible case--the function D(a). The properties of regular rings are then discussed, and a variety of results are presented for lattices that are continuous geometries, for which irreducibility is not assumed. For students and researchers interested in ring theory or projective geometries, this book is required reading. ... Read more

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This is Bulletin , Volume 64, Number 3, Part II, May 1958. A memorial to the late John von Neumann edited by J. C. Oxtoby, B. J. Pettis and E. B. Price. ... Read more

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Chapters: John Von Neumann, Enrico Fermi, Box-muller Transform, Josiah Willard Gibbs, Monte Carlo Method, Stanislaw Ulam, Inverse Transform Sampling, Metropolis-hastings Algorithm, Simulated Annealing, Metropolis Light Transport, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Monte Carlo Methods in Finance, Ensemble Kalman Filter, Monte Carlo Integration, Resampling, Monte Carlo Method for Photon Transport, Particle Filter, Importance Sampling, Kinetic Monte Carlo, Renfrey Potts, Ensemble Forecasting, Markov Chain Monte Carlo, Monte Carlo Methods for Option Pricing, Nicholas Metropolis, Gillespie Algorithm, Cross-Entropy Method, Multiple-Try Metropolis, Equation of State Calculations by Fast Computing Machines, Event Generator, Auxiliary Field Monte Carlo, Coupling From the Past, Wang and Landau Algorithm, Parallel Tempering, Marsaglia Polar Method, Rejection Sampling, Quasi-Monte Carlo Method, Demon Algorithm, Antithetic Variates, Daniel Gillespie, Direct Simulation Monte Carlo, Variance Reduction, Umbrella Sampling, Athanasios Papoulis, Vegas Algorithm, Reversible Jump, Reverse Monte Carlo, Phelim Boyle, Monte Carlo Molecular Modeling, David B. Hertz, Dynamic Monte Carlo Method, Auxiliary Particle Filter, Monte Carlo Project, Control Variate, Boss, Wolff Algorithm, Swendsen-wang Algorithm. Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 295. Not illustrated. Free updates online. Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt: John von Neumann (December 28, 1903 February 8, 1957) was a Hungarian-American mathematician who made major contributions to a vast range of fields, including set theory, functional analysis, quantum mechanics, ergodic theory, continuous geometry, economics and game theory, computer science, numerical analysis, hydrodynamics (of explosions), and statistics, as well as many other mathematical fields. He is generally regarded as one of the greatest ma...More: http://booksllc.net/?id=15942 ... Read more

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Kapitel: John Forbes Nash Jr., Peter Singer, John Rawls, John Von Neumann, Kurt Gödel, Thomas Mann, Joschka Fischer, Hannah Arendt, Wolfgang Pauli, Toni Morrison, Joseph E. Stiglitz, Thomas S. Kuhn, Ralph Nader, Hermann Weyl, André Weil, Woodrow Wilson, Riccardo Giacconi, Alonzo Church, Chen Ning Yang, Owen Willans Richardson, Philip W. Anderson, Richard Bellman, Paul Krugman, Gerd Faltings, Albert Einstein, Donald Davidson, George F. Kennan, Andreas Alföldi, Haruki Murakami, Philip Roth, Hans Jonas, Henry de Wolf Smyth, Julian Jaynes, Rudolf Carnap, Hilary Putnam, Carl Ludwig Siegel, Richard Rorty, Ernst Herzfeld, Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield, Friedrich Hirzebruch, Michael Walzer, James Mark Baldwin, Erwin Panofsky, Martin Rudwick, Arno J. Mayer, Joyce Carol Oates, Soner Çağaptay, John Archibald Wheeler, Eugene Paul Wigner, Ernst Kantorowicz, Stephen Walt, Solomon Lefschetz, Armand Borel, Jacob Taubes, Ruth Klüger, Lewis Lockwood, Marlan Scully, Sanford Grossman, Atle Selberg, Emil Artin, Kenneth Burke, Werner Michael Blumenthal, Arne Beurling, Alexandre Koyré, Margarete Bieber, Ben Bernanke, Alexander Stephan, William J. Baumol, Peter Dinzelbacher, Andrew Wiles, Albert Otto Hirschman, Alexander Markowitsch Poljakow, Bruce Metzger, Harold James, David Gross, Manjul Bhargava, Peter Schäfer, Peter P. Kahane, Carl Gustav Hempel, Yves Bonnefoy, John Willard Milnor, Cornel West, Gerald Brown, Edmund White, Salomon Bochner, Yusef Komunyakaa, Edward Witten, Frederick Almgren, Elliott Lieb, Otto Kallscheuer, Abba Eban, Robert O. Keohane, Enrique Tierno Galván, Anthony Grafton, Peter Brown, Thomas Nagel, Joseph Wedderburn, Kodaira Kunihiko, Saul Aaron Kripke, Edward Tufte, Donald E. Stokes, Martin Kruskal, Nicolas Nabokov, Philippa Foot, James C. Fletcher, Peter Sarnak, Henry Fine, Frank Wilczek, Arthur Mcdonald, Oswald Veblen, Enrico Bombieri, Rosalind Krauss, Scott Soames, Alessandro Schiesaro, John Lighton Synge, John Emery Murdoch...http://booksllc.net/?l=de ... Read more