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        In his blazingly brilliant career as a mathematician, John von Neumann (1903-1957), one of the greatest polymaths of all times, had a profound impact on mathematics, quantum theory, economics, computer science, neurology and other fields. He was the brightest star in Princeton's mathematical firmament and the apostle of the new mathematical era which began in the 1940s.

        At 45, he came to be universally considered as the most cosmopolitan, multifaceted and intelligent mathematician the 20th Century had produced. No one was more responsible for creating the newly-found importance of mathematics among America's intellectual elite. In every sense of the word, he was the last true polymath and made half a dozen brilliant careers by plunging fearlessly and frequently into any area where highly abstract mathematical thought could provide fresh insights. His iconoclastic ideas ranged from the first rigorous proof of the ergodic theorem to ways of controlling the weather, from the implosion device for the atom bomb to the theory of games, from a new algebra of rings of operators for studying quantum physics to the notion of outfitting computers with stored programmes. A giant among pure mathematicians by the age of 30, he also became in turn physicist, economist, weapons expert and computer visionary. Of his 150 published papers, 60 were in pure mathematics, 20 in physics, and 60 in applied mathematics, including statistics and game theory. When he died in 1957 of cancer at the age of 53, he left behind him a partially finished manuscript for 'The Computer and the Brain,' which was his last major intellectual project.

Von Neumann was born in Budapest in 1903. He was the son of a successful Jewish banker. After an exceptional formal and informal education he was exposed to many of Hungary's intellectual luminaries of the period. One of Hungary's best secondary schools, the Lutheran Gymnasium provided him with a university tutor to guide, shape and build his mathematical gifts. He enrolled at the Universities of Budapest and Berlin in 1921. He studied chemical engineering at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology from 1923 to 1925 and got his degree in 1925. In the following year, he took his PhD in mathematics from the University of Budapest. He became the youngest assistant professor ever to serve at the University of Berlin, and later spent a year at Hamburg, also as an assistant professor. He also obtained the prestigious Rockefeller Fellowship at the University of Göttingen. After 1928, von Neumann came under the inspiring influence of Werner Heisenberg, the leading German theorist of quantum mechanics who stated that it was impossible to measure precisely both the position and the momentum of an elementary particle (with the product of uncertainties being at least Planck's Constant). Fascinated by Heisenberg's theory, von Neumann began work in quantum theory. This led to his 'Mathematische Grundlagen der Quantenmechanik' (1932), in which he discussed the much-debated question of indeterminism in quantum theory. Until then, indeterminism was thought to be the result of hidden parameters which need only be identified to restore determinism. Von Neumann 'concluded that no introduction of 'hidden parameters' could keep the basic structure of quantum theory and restore 'causality'. He argued that the indeterminism was inherent in quantum theory because of the interaction of the observer and the observed. From 1930-33, von Neumann was a visiting professor at Princeton University in USA. In 1933, when Princeton's new Institute for Advanced Study was opened as a non- teaching institution, he became its youngest professor in mathematics.

John Von Neumann (1903 - 1957)

        After 1940, he moved through different disciplines. The general direction of all the post-war scientific disciplines was marked by a decreased emphasis on motion, force, energy, and power and an increased emphasis on communication, organisation, programming and control. The theme of self-reference in systems which was the main characteristic of the major work of von Neumann right from his early days came to be universally recognised and welcomed in mid-1940s. It is not therefore surprising that self-reference became a key element in many of von Neumann's later contributions as well, ranging from his treatment of the apparent regresses of game theory to the self-reproduction of organisms.

        During World War II, von Neumann advised the US government on the war effort, including the construction of the atom bomb. He was a top mathematician in Oppenheimer's Manhattan Project from 1943 onward. The massive computational needs of the atomic bomb project led von Neumann to become involved in the quest for computers that could match the requirements of the gigantic task he had undertaken. He remained actively associated with the US government even after the II World War and continued this close association till his death in 1957. At the instance of the US Ministry of Defence, he became a consultant to the RAND Corporation which was set up as a think-tank by the American military establishment in 1948. He was appointed as a member of the Atomic Energy Commission in 1954. He was one of the people who told Americans how to think about the nuclear bomb and the Russians, as well as how to think about the peaceful uses of atomic energy.

        After the end of the II World War in 1945, von Neumann's real passion became 'computers'. While he did not build the first computer, his ideas about computer architecture were widely accepted, and he invented mathematical techniques needed for computers. He and his collaborators, who included the future scientific director of IBM, Hermann Goldsteine, invented and stored rather than hardwired programmes, a prototype digital computer, and a system for weather prediction. Von Neumann machine was the name given to a class of computers (including most computers which exist to this day) which share a family of core components and a logical structure. First posited in a 1945 memo, this was the plan for a new kind of computer, the 'stored programme' computer, which would be far more flexible than its predecessor. Instead of having program instructions wired in, the 'stored programme' computer kept its specific instructions (programmes) in its memories, storing the information in the same manner as it would store any other information (data). The theoretically-oriented Institute of Advance Studies at Princeton showed no interest in building a computer along the lines proposed by von Neumann and so he sold the idea to the US Navy, strongly arguing that the Normandy invasion had almost failed because of poor weather prediction. He promoted the MANIAC, as the machine was eventually named, as a device for improving meteorological prediction. More than anything, von Neumann was the one who saw the great potential of these 'thinking machines' most clearly, arguing as early as in 1945 that 'many branches of both pure and applied mathematics are in great need of computing instrument to break the present stalemate created by the failure of the purely analytical approach to nonlinear problems'. It was von Neumann who was responsible for ushering in the modern information technology revolution. Everything von Neumann touched was imbued with his glamour. By wading fearlessly into fields far beyond mathematics, he inspired other young geniuses like John Forbes Nash to do the same. John Forbes Nash won the Nobel Prize for Economics in 1994. Von Neumann's success in applying similar approaches to dissimilar problems was a green light for younger men who were to become problem solvers rather than specialists.

        The greatest and the most important contribution of von Neumann was in the field of the theory of games. Along with Oskar Morgenstern, he published his revolutionary book called 'The theory of games and economic behaviour'' in 1944. Right from the late 1920's, von Neumann had attempted to construct a systematic theory of rational human behaviour by focusing on games as simple settings for the exercise of human rationality. He was the first mathematician to provide a complete mathematical description of a game and to prove a fundamental result, the MIN-MAX Theorem.

        The essence of von Neumann and Morgenstern's message was that economics was a hopelessly unscientific discipline whose leading members were busy pedalling solutions to pressing problems of the day, such as stabilising the levels of prices and employment—without the benefit of any scientific basis for their proposals. They argued in their landmark book that economics had failed not because of the human element or because of poor measurement of economic variables. Rather, they claimed, 'Economic problems are not formulated clearly and are often stated in such vague terms as to make mathematical treatment a priori appear hopeless, because it is quite uncertain what the problems really are. Instead of pretending that they had the expertise to solve urgent social problems, economists should devote themselves to the gradual development of a theory. The new theory of games we are presenting is the proper instrument with which to develop a theory of economic behaviour. We are of the view that the typical problems of economic behaviour become strictly identical with the mathematical notions of suitable games of strategy'.

        It is given to very few scholars to leave their imprint on many disciplines like pure mathematics, applied mathematics, physics, chemistry, economics, psychology, neurology and several other social sciences. Such a privilege was given to von Neumann by Destiny. As one of the greatest polymaths of world history, he was in love with the aristocracy of the intellect. At the same time he firmly believed that exclusive and indivisible belief in the aristocracy of the intellect alone can only destroy the civilisation that we know. To quote his own words:

        'If we are anything, we must be a democracy of the intellect. We must not perish by the distance between people and government, between people and power, by which Babylon and Egypt and Rome failed. And that distance can only be conflated, can only be closed, if informed knowledge sits in the homes and heads of people with no ambition to control others, and not up in the isolated seats of power. it is not the business of science to inherit the earth, but to inherit the moral imagination; because without that man and beliefs and science will perish together'.