World War II

In late 1943 von Neumann began work on the Manhattan Project at the invitation of J. Robert Oppenheimer. Von Neumann was an expert in the nonlinear physics of hydrodynamics and shock waves, an expertise that he had already applied to chemical explosives in the British war effort. At Los Alamos, New Mexico, von Neumann worked on Seth Neddermeyer’s implosion design for an atomic bomb. This called for a hollow sphere containing fissionable plutonium to be symmetrically imploded in order to drive the plutonium into a critical mass at the centre. The implosion had to be so symmetrical that it was compared to crushing a beer can without splattering any beer. Adapting an idea proposed by James Tuck, von Neumann calculated that a “lens” of faster- and slower-burning chemical explosives could achieve the needed degree of symmetry. The Fat Man atomic bomb, dropped on the Japanese port of Nagasaki, used this design. Von Neumann participated in the selection of a Japanese target, arguing against bombing the Imperial Palace, Tokyo.

Overlapping with this work was von Neumann’s magnum opus of applied math, Theory of Games and Economic Behavior (1944), cowritten with Princeton economist Oskar Morgenstern. Game theory had been orphaned since the 1928 publication of “Theory of Parlor Games,” with neither von Neumann nor anyone else significantly developing it. The collaboration with Morgernstern burgeoned to 641 pages, the authors arguing for game theory as the “Newtonian science” underlying economic decisions. The book created a vogue for game theory among economists that has partly subsided. The theory has also had broad influence in fields ranging from evolutionary biology to defense planning.

Later years and assessment

In the postwar years, von Neumann spent increasing time as a consultant to government and industry. Starting in 1944, he contributed important ideas to the U.S. Army’s hard-wired ENIAC computer, designed by J. Presper Eckert, Jr., and John W. Mauchly. Most important, von Neumann modified ENIAC to run as a stored-program machine. He then lobbied to build an improved computer at the Institute for Advanced Study. The IAS machine, which began operating in 1951, used binary arithmetic—ENIAC had used decimal numbers—and shared the same memory for code and data, a design that greatly facilitated the “conditional loops” at the heart of all subsequent coding. Von Neumann’s publications on computer design (1945–51) created friction with Eckert and Mauchly, who sought to patent their contributions, and led to the independent construction of similar machines around the world. This established the merit of a single-processor, stored-program computer—the widespread architecture now known as a von Neumann machine. See also computer: Von Neumann’s “Preliminary Discussion” and BTW: Computer patent wars.

Another important consultancy was at the RAND Corporation, a think tank charged with planning nuclear strategy for the U.S. Air Force. Von Neumann insisted on the value of game-theoretic thinking in defense policy. He supported development of the hydrogen bomb and was reported to have advocated a preventive nuclear strike to destroy the Soviet Union’s nascent nuclear capability circa 1950. Despite his hawkish stance, von Neumann defended Oppenheimer against attacks on his patriotism and warned Edward Teller that his Livermore Laboratory (now the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory) cofounders were “too reactionary.” From 1954 until 1956, von Neumann served as a member of the Atomic Energy Commission and was an architect of the policy of nuclear deterrence developed by President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s administration.

In his last years, von Neumann puzzled over the question of whether a machine could reproduce itself. Using an abstract model (a cellular automata), von Neumann outlined how a machine could reproduce itself from simple components. Key to this demonstration is that the machine reads its own “genetic” code, interpreting it first as instructions for constructing the machine exclusive of the code and second as data. In the second phase, the machine copies its code in order to create a completely “fertile” new machine. Conceptually, this work anticipated later discoveries in genetics.

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Von Neumann was diagnosed with bone cancer in 1955. He continued to work even as his health deteriorated rapidly. In 1956 he received the Enrico Fermi Award. A lifelong agnostic, shortly before his death he converted to Roman Catholicism.

Economist Paul Samuelson judged von Neumann “a genius (if that 18th century word still has a meaning)—a man so smart he saw through himself.” Von Neumann was part of a serial exodus of Hungarians who fled to Germany and then to America, forging remarkable careers in the sciences. His friend Stanislaw Ulam recalled von Neumann attributing this Hungarian phenomenon to “a subconscious feeling of extreme insecurity in individuals, and the necessity of producing the unusual or facing extinction.” Von Neumann’s shift to applied mathematics after the midpoint of his career mystified colleagues, who felt that a genius of his calibre should concern himself with “pure” mathematics. In an essay written for James Newman’s The World of Mathematics (1956), von Neumann made an eloquent defense of applied mathematics. He praised the invigorating influence of “some underlying empirical, worldly motif” in mathematics, warning that “at a great distance from its empirical source, or after much abstract inbreeding, a mathematical subject is in danger of degeneration.” With his pivotal work on quantum theory, the atomic bomb, and the computer, von Neumann likely exerted a greater influence on the modern world than any other mathematician of the 20th century.