by George Dyson
36. Albert Einstein to Queen Elisabeth of Belgium, November 20, 1933 (Einstein Archives, Hebrew University, Jerusalem, call no. 32-369.00).
37. Oswald Veblen to Abraham Flexner, April 12, 1934, IAS; Abraham Flexner to Herbert Maass, October 18, 1932, IAS.
38. Herbert Maass to Abraham Flexner, November 9, 1932, IAS; Oswald Veblen to Abraham Flexner, March 13, 1933, IAS; Louis Bamberger to Abraham Flexner, October 29, 1935, IAS; Herbert Maass, Minutes of the Trustees, April 13, 1936, IAS.
39. Abraham Flexner to Louis Bamberger, October 28, 1935, IAS; Abraham Flexner to Louis Bamberger, December 19, 1935, IAS.
40. Oswald Veblen to Frank Aydelotte, February 13, 1936, IAS.
41. Herman Goldstine, interview with Nancy Stern, August 11, 1980, CBI, call no. OH 18.
42. Watson Davis, “Super-University for Super-Scholars,” The Science News-Letter 23, no. 616 (Jan. 28, 1933): 54; Flexner, I Remember, p. 375; ibid., pp. 377–78; Frank Aydelotte to Herbert H. Maass, June 15, 1945, IAS.
43. Thorstein Veblen, The Higher Learning in America (New York: B.W. Huebsch, 1918), p. 45.
44. Flexner, I Remember, pp. 361 and 375.
45. Abraham Flexner to Frank Aydelotte, November 15, 1939, IAS-BS; Klára von Neumann, Two New Worlds.
46. Frank Aydelotte, Report of the Director, May 19, 1941, IAS.
47. Woolf, ed., A Community of Scholars, p. 130.
48. Oswald Veblen to Abraham Flexner, March 24, 1937, IAS-BS; J. B. S. Haldane, November 12, 1936, IAS-BS.
49. Deane Montgomery, interview with Albert Tucker and Frederik Nebeker, March 13, 1985.
50. Benoît Mandelbrot, interview with author, May 8, 2004, GBD.
51. P. A. M. Dirac to IAS Trustees, n.d., FJD; J. Robert Oppenheimer to Oswald Veblen, May 27, 1959, IAS.
52. Freeman J. Dyson to S. Chandrasekhar, M. J. Lighthill, Sir Geoffrey Taylor, Sydney Goldstein, and Sir Edward Bullard, October 20, 1954, IAS.
FOUR: NEUMANN JÁNOS
1. Klára von Neumann, The Grasshopper, ca. 1963, KVN.
2. Nicholas Vonneumann, interview with author, May 6, 2004, GBD.
3. Nicholas Vonneumann, John von Neumann as Seen by His Brother (Meadowbrook, Pa.: Nicholas Vonneumann, 1987), p. 17.
4. Nicholas Vonneumann, interview with author.
5. Stanislaw Ulam, Adventures of a Mathematician (New York: Scribner’s, 1976), p. 80; Herman Goldstine, The Computer from Pascal to von Neumann (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1972), p. 167.
6. Vonneumann, John von Neumann as Seen by His Brother, p. 9.
7. Ibid., p. 10.
8. John von Neumann, statement upon nomination to membership in the AEC, March 8, 1955, VNLC.
9. Nicholas Vonneumann, interview with author.
10. Vonneumann, John von Neumann as Seen by His Brother, pp. 23, 16.
11. Ibid., p. 24.
12. Nicholas Vonneumann, interview with author.
13. Stanislaw Ulam, “John von Neumann: 1903–1957,” Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society 64, no. 3, part 2 (May 1958): 1.
14. Klára von Neumann, Johnny, ca. 1963, KVN; Ulam, “John von Neumann: 1903–1957,” 2:37.
15. John von Neumann to Stan Ulam, December 9, 1939, SFU; Oskar Morgenstern, in John von Neumann, documentary produced by the Mathematical Association of America, 1966.
16. Klára von Neumann, Johnny.
17. John von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern, Theory of Games and Economic Behavior (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1944), p. 2; Samuelson, “A Revisionist View of Von Neumann’s Growth Model,” in M. Dore, S. Chakravarty, and Richard Goodwin, eds., John von Neumann and Modern Economics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), p. 121.
18. Klára von Neumann, Johnny.
19. Edward Teller, in Jean R. Brink and Roland Haden, “Interviews with Edward Teller and Eugene P. Wigner,” Annals of the History of Computing 11, no. 3 (1989): 177.
20. Herman H. Goldstine, “Remembrance of Things Past,” in Stephen G. Nash, ed., A History of Scientific Computing (New York: ACM Press, 1990), p. 9.
21. Klára von Neumann, Johnny; Cuthbert C. Hurd, interview with Nancy Stern, January 20, 1981, CBI, call no. OH 76.
22. Klára von Neumann, Johnny.
23. Françoise Ulam, “From Paris to Los Alamos,” unpublished, July 1994, SFU; Klára von Neumann, Johnny.
24. Herman Goldstine, interview with Albert Tucker and Frederik Nebeker; Nicholas Vonneumann, interview with author.
25. Ulam, Adventures of a Mathematician, pp. 65, 79; Vincent Ford to Stan Ulam, May 18, 1965, SUAPS.
26. Martin Schwarzschild, interview with William Aspray, November 18, 1986, CBI, call no. OH 124.
27. Paul R. Halmos, “The Legend of John von Neumann,” American Mathematical Monthly 80, no. 4 (April 1973): 394; ibid.; Eugene Wigner, “Two Kinds of Reality,” The Monist 49, no. 2 (April 1964), reprinted in Symmetries and Reflections (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1967), p. 198.
28. Raoul Bott, interview with author, March 10, 2005, GBD.
29. Ulam, “John von Neumann: 1903–1957,” 2:2; Eugene P. Wigner, The Recollections of Eugene P. Wigner, as Told to Andrew Szanton (New York and London: Plenum Press, 1992), p. 51.
30. Theodore von Kármán (with Lee Edson), The Wind and Beyond: Theodore von Kármán, Pioneer in Aviation and Pathfinder in Space (Boston and Toronto: Little, Brown and Co., 1967), p. 106.
31. Abraham A. Fraenkel to Stan Ulam, November 11, 1957, SUAPS.
32. Ulam, “John von Neumann: 1903–1957,” 2:11–12.
33. Ibid., 2:12.
34. Paul Halmos, in John von Neumann, documentary.
35. Samuelson, “A Revisionist View of Von Neumann’s Growth Model,” p. 118.
36. Klára von Neumann, Two New Worlds.
37. Wigner, Recollections of Eugene P. Wigner, p. 134.
38. Klára von Neumann, Two New Worlds; John von Neumann to Oswald Veblen, January 11, 1931, OVLC.
39. Klára von Neumann, Johnny.
40. John von Neumann to Oswald Veblen, April 3, 1933, OVLC.
41. Klára von Neumann, Two New Worlds.
42. Klára von Neumann, Johnny; Marina von Neumann Whitman, interview with author, May 3, 2010, GBD.
43. John von Neumann to Klára von Neumann, n.d., evidently summer 1949, KVN.
44. Israel Halperin, interview with Albert Tucker, May 25, 1984, in Princeton Mathematics Community in the 1930s, transcript 18.
45. Robert D. Richtmyer, “People Don’t Do Arithmetic,” unpublished, 1995; Morgenstern, in John von Neumann, documentary; Richtmyer, “People Don’t Do Arithmetic.”
46. Klára von Neumann, Two New Worlds; Abraham Flexner to Oswald Veblen, July 26, 1938, in Stern, A History of the Institute for Advanced Study, 1930–1950, 1:396.
47. Marina von Neumann Whitman, interview with author, May 3, 2010; John von Neumann to Klára von Neumann, October 25, 1946, KVN.
48. Cuthbert C. Hurd, interview with Nancy Stern.
49. Marina von Neumann Whitman, interview with author, February 9, 2006, GBD; Herman Goldstine, interview with Albert Tucker and Frederik Nebeker.
50. John von Neumann to F. B. Silsbee, July 2, 1945, VNLC; Ulam, Adventures of a Mathematician, p. 78; Goldstine, The Computer from Pascal to von Neumann, p. 176.
51. Ulam, Adventures of a Mathematician, pp. 231–32.
52. John von Neumann to Saunders Mac Lane, May 17, 1948, VNLC; Ulam, “John von Neumann: 1903–1957,” 2:5; Lewis Strauss to Stanislaw Ulam, November 12, 1957, SUAPS.
53. John von Neumann to Stan Ulam, November 8, 1940, SFU.
54. John von Neumann to J. Robert Oppenheimer, February 19, 1948, VNLC; John von Neumann to L. Roy Wilcox, December 26, 1941, KVN.
55. John von Neumann, “Theory of Shock Waves,” Progress Report to the National Defense Research Committee, August 31, 1942, reprinted in Collected Works, vol. 6: Theory of Games, Astrophysics, Hydrodynamics and Meteorology, p. 19.
56. Martin Schwarzschild, interview with William A
spray.
57. John von Neumann, “Oblique Reflection of Shocks,” Explosives Research Report No. 12, Navy Dept., Bureau of Ordnance, October 12, 1943, reprinted in Collected Works, vol. 6: Theory of Games, Astrophysics, Hydrodynamics and Meteorology, p. 22.
58. Klára von Neumann, Johnny.
59. John von Neumann to John Todd, November 17, 1947, in John Todd, “John von Neumann and the National Accounting Machine,” SIAM Review 16, no. 4 (October 1974): 526.
60. Nicholas Metropolis and E. C. Nelson, “Early Computing at Los Alamos,” Annals of the History of Computing 4, no. 4 (October 1982): 352.
61. John von Neumann to Klára von Neumann, September 22, 1943, KVN; John von Neumann to Klára von Neumann, September 24, 1943, KVN.
62. Nicholas Metropolis and Francis H. Harlow, “Computing and Computers: Weapons Simulation Leads to the Computer Era,” Los Alamos Science 7 (Winter/Spring 1983): 132.
63. Richard P. Feynman, “Los Alamos from Below: Reminiscences of 1943–1945,” Engineering and Science 39, no. 2 (January–February 1976): 25.
64. Metropolis and Harlow, “Computing and Computers,” p. 134.
65. Feynman, “Los Alamos from Below,” p. 25.
66. Metropolis and Nelson, “Early Computing at Los Alamos,” p. 351.
67. Feynman, “Los Alamos from Below,” p. 28.
68. Klára von Neumann, Johnny.
69. “Allocution Pronounced by the Reverend Dom Anselm Strittmatter at the Obsequies of Professor John von Neumann, in the chapel of Walter Reed Hospital, February 11, 1957,” in Vonneumann, John von Neumann as Seen by His Brother, p. 64.
70. Vonneumann, John von Neumann as Seen by His Brother, pp. 14–15.
71. Klára von Neumann, Johnny.
72. Ibid.
73. Marina von Neumann to Klára von Neumann, August 28, 1945, KVN.
FIVE: MANIAC
1. Minutes of the Institute for Advanced Study Electronic Computer Project, Meeting #1, November 12, 1945, IAS.
2. Vladimir Zworykin, unpublished autobiography, n.d., ca. 1975, p. 24 (in Bogdan Maglich, unpublished Zworykin biography, n.d., courtesy of Bogdan Maglich).
3. Record for Dr. Craig Waff of the conversation with Dr. Zworykin, September 4, 1976, in Maglich, unpublished Zworykin biography.
4. Jan Rajchman, “Vladimir Kosma Zworykin, 1889–1982,” Biographical Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 88 (Washington, D.C.: National Academies Press, 2006), p. 12.
5. Herbert H. Maass to Frank Aydelotte, October 17, 1945, IAS.
6. FBI SAC (special agent in charge) Newark to Director, FBI, December 6, 1956, after Albert Abramson, Zworykin, Pioneer of Television (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1995), p. 199.
7. Vladimir K. Zworykin, “Some Prospects in the Field of Electronics,” Journal of the Franklin Institute 251, no. 1 (January 1951): 235–36.
8. Jan Rajchman, “Early Research on Computers at RCA,” in Metropolis, Howlett, and Rota, eds., A History of Computing in the Twentieth Century (New York: Academic Press, 1980), p. 465.
9. Jan Rajchman, interview with Richard R. Mertz, October 26, 1970, National Museum of American History Computer Oral History Collection, Washington, D.C.
10. Richard L. Snyder Jr. and Jan A. Rajchman, Calculating Device: Patent No. 2,424,389, patented July 22, 1947, application July 30, 1943; Jan Rajchman, interview with Richard R. Mertz.
11. Jan Rajchman, “The Selectron,” in Martin Campbell-Kelly and Michael R. Williams, eds., The Moore School Lectures (1946), Charles Babbage Institute Reprint Series No. 9 (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1985), p. 497.
12. Rajchman, “Early Research on Computers at RCA,” p. 466; Jan Rajchman, interview with Richard R. Mertz; Jan A. Rajchman, Electronic Computing Device, U.S. Patent Office Patent Number 2,428,811, application October 30, 1943, patented October 14, 1947, assigned to Radio Corporation of America.
13. Jan Rajchman, interview with Richard R. Mertz.
14. Goldstine, August 16, 1944, in The Computer from Pascal to von Neumann, p. 166.
15. Herman Goldstine, interview with Albert Tucker and Frederik Nebeker; ibid.
16. “Report on History” (“setting forth very briefly the relationship of the ENIAC, EDVAC and the Institute machine”), from Herman H. Goldstine and John von Neumann to Colonel G. F. Powell, February 15, 1947, IAS.
17. Willis Ware, interview with author; J. Presper Eckert, interview with Nancy Stern, October 28, 1977, CBI, OH 13.
18. John W. Mauchly, “The Use of High Speed Vacuum Tube Devices for Calculating,” August 1942, reprinted in Brian Randell, ed., The Origins of Digital Computers: Selected Papers (New York: Springer-Verlag, 1982), pp. 355–58.
19. Nicholas Metropolis, “The Beginning of the Monte Carlo Method,” in Los Alamos Science, no. 15, Special Issue: Stanislaw Ulam, 1909–1984 (1987): 125.
20. John G. Brainerd, “Genesis of the ENIAC,” Technology and Culture 17, no. 3. (July 1976): 487.
21. Harry L. Reed, November 14, 1996, in Thomas Bergin, ed., 50 Years of Army Computing, p. 153; Jan Rajchman, interview with Mark Heyer and Al Pinsky, July 11, 1975, IEEE Oral History Project.
22. J. Presper Eckert, “The ENIAC,” in Metropolis, Howlett, and Rota, eds., A History of Computing in the Twentieth Century, p. 528; Karl Kempf, Electronic Computers Within the Ordnance Corps (Aberdeen Proving Ground, Md.: History Office, November 1961).
23. John von Neumann, Memo on Mechanical Computing Devices, to Col. L. E. Simon, Ballistic Research Laboratory, January 30, 1945, VNLC; Nicholas Metropolis to Klára von Neumann, February 15, 1949, KVN; Nicholas Metropolis, “The Los Alamos Experience, 1943–1954,” in Nash, ed., A History of Scientific Computing, p. 237.
24. Brainerd, “Genesis of the ENIAC,” p. 488; Goldstine, The Computer from Pascal to von Neumann, p. 149.
25. U.S. Army War Department, Bureau of Public Relations, Press Release, Ordnance Department Develops All-Electronic Calculating Machine, February 16, 1946; Samuel H. Caldwell to Warren Weaver, January 16, 1946, RF.
26. Herman Goldstine, interview with Albert Tucker and Frederik Nebeker; Herman Goldstine, November 13, 1996, in Bergin, ed., 50 Years of Army Computing, p. 33.
27. Eckert, “The ENIAC,” p. 525.
28. Goldstine, “Remembrance of Things Past,” p. 9.
29. J. Presper Eckert, interview with Nancy Stern.
30. John W. Mauchly, “The ENIAC,” in Metropolis, Howlett, and Rota, eds., A History of Computing in the Twentieth Century, p. 545; ibid. pp. 547–48.
31. John von Neumann, lecture at the University of Illinois, December 1949, in Arthur Burks, ed., Theory of Self-Reproducing Automata (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1966), p. 40.
32. Arthur W. and Alice R. Burks, interview with Nancy Stern, June 20, 1980, CBI, call no. OH 75.
33. Summary of Honeywell Inc. v. Sperry Rand Corp., No. 4-67 Civ. 138, Decided Oct. 19, 1973, in United States Patents Quarterly 180 (March 25, 1974): 682, 693–94.
34. Mauchly, “The ENIAC,” in Metropolis, Howlett, and Rota, eds., A History of Computing in the Twentieth Century, p. 547.
35. “Report on History.”
36. John von Neumann to Warren Weaver, November 2, 1945, RF; M. H. A. Newman, quoted by I. J. Good in “Turing and the Computer,” Nature 307 (February 1, 1984): 663.
37. “Report on History.”
38. Jan Rajchman, interview with Richard R. Mertz.
39. John von Neumann to J. Robert Oppenheimer, August 1, 1944, LA.
40. John W. Mauchly, letter to the editor, Datamation 25, no. 11 (1979).
41. Herman Goldstine, interview with Nancy Stern.
42. John von Neumann, “First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC,” Contract No. W-670-ORD-4926 between the U.S. Army Ordnance Department and the University of Pennsylvania, Moore School of Electrical Engineering, University of Pennsylvania, June 30, 1945, p. 1.
43. John von Neumann to M. H. A Newman, March 19, 1946, VNLC.
44. Julian Bigelow, interview with
Nancy Stern, August 12, 1980, CBI, call no. OH3.
45. John W. Mauchly, letter to the editor.
46. J. Presper Eckert, interview with Nancy Stern.
47. John von Neumann to Stanley Frankel, October 29, 1946, VNLC.
48. John von Neumann, deposition concerning EDVAC report, n.d., 1947, IAS.
49. Willis H. Ware, “The History and Development of the Electronic Computer Project at the Institute for Advanced Study,” RAND Corporation Memorandum P-377, March 10, 1953, p. 6; Arthur W. Burks, interview with William Aspray, June 20, 1987, CBI, call no. OH 136.
50. Willis H. Ware, interview with Nancy Stern.
51. Retainer agreement between von Neumann and IBM, May 1, 1945, VNLC; J. Presper Eckert, interview with Nancy Stern.
52. John von Neumann to Stanley Frankel, October 29, 1946, VNLC.
53. Von Neumann, “First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC,” p. 74.
54. Julian H. Bigelow, “Report on Computer Development at the Institute for Advanced Study,” for the International Research Conference on the History of Computing, Los Alamos, June 10–15, 1976, draft, n.d. (quoted text was deleted from the published version), JHB; Norbert Wiener to John von Neumann, March 24, 1945, VNLC.
55. James B. Conant to Frank Aydelotte, October 31, 1945, IAS; James Alexander to Frank Aydelotte, August 25, 1945, IAS.
56. Julian Bigelow, interview with Richard R. Mertz, January 20, 1971, Computer Oral History Collection, Archives Center, National Museum of American History, Washington, D.C.; Frank Aydelotte to James W. Alexander, August 22, 1945, IAS; Report of the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry, April 20, 1946 (Washington, D.C.: Department of State, 1946). Transcript at http://avalon.law.yale.edu/subject_menus/angtoc.asp.
57. Klára von Neumann, Johnny; E. A. Lowe to Frank Aydelotte, October 10, 1947, IAS.
58. Frank Aydelotte to John von Neumann, January 22, 1946, IAS; minutes of the School of Mathematics, June 2, 1945, IAS.
59. John von Neumann to Frank Aydelotte, August 5, 1945, IAS.
60. Frank Aydelotte to Samuel S. Fels, September 12, 1945, IAS.
61. Warren Weaver to Frank Aydelotte, October 1, 1945, IAS.
62. John von Neumann to Warren Weaver, November 2, 1945, RF.