John von Neumann might be the most important figure in Wolfram Physics prehistory.
Whenever any of the most important prerequisites to Wolfram Physics were happening – quantum mechanics, Gödel’s theorem, Turing machines, electronic computers, cellular automata – John von Neumann always seemed to be there.
How did John von Neumann always come to be in the right place at the right time to contribute to some of the most significant developments in physics, mathematics and computation history?
For this, another high-budget, big-hair episode of The Last Theory, I flew all the way to Budapest, where John von Neumann was born, to point to a plaque and get some answers.
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I took inspiration and information for this episode from Ananyo Bhattacharya’s [ Ссылка ] biography of John von Neumann: The Man from the Future
People
- John von Neumann [ Ссылка ]
- Albert Einstein [ Ссылка ]
- Erwin Schrödinger [ Ссылка ]
- Werner Heisenberg [ Ссылка ]
- Kurt Gödel [ Ссылка ]
- Alan Turing [ Ссылка ]
- Seth Neddermeyer [ Ссылка ]
- J. Presper Eckert [ Ссылка ]
- John Mauchly [ Ссылка ]
- Stephen Wolfram [ Ссылка ]
- Jonathan Gorard [ Ссылка ]
- Max Piskunov [ Ссылка ]
- Stanisław Ulam [ Ссылка ]
- Father Strickland [ Ссылка ]
Concepts
- Hilbert space [ Ссылка ]
- Gödel’s incompleteness theorems [ Ссылка ]
- Universal Turing machine [ Ссылка ]
- Turing’s proof [ Ссылка ]
- Von Neumann architecture [ Ссылка ]
- The Manhattan Project [ Ссылка ]
- Cellular automata [ Ссылка ]
Computers
- IAS machine [ Ссылка ]
- ENIAC [ Ссылка ]
- EDVAC [ Ссылка ]
- IBM 701 [ Ссылка ]
Images
- Image of John von Neumann from the Los Alamos National Laboratory, which rather pointlessly requires that this rather ponderous statement be reproduced here: “Unless otherwise indicated, this information has been authored by an employee or employees of the Los Alamos National Security, LLC (LANS), operator of the Los Alamos National Laboratory under Contract No. DE-AC52-06NA25396 with the U.S. Department of Energy. The U.S. Government has rights to use, reproduce, and distribute this information. The public may copy and use this information without charge, provided that this Notice and any statement of authorship are reproduced on all copies. Neither the Government nor LANS makes any warranty, express or implied, or assumes any liability or responsibility for the use of this information.”
- Turing Machine Model Davey 2012 by Rocky Acosta [ Ссылка ] licensed under CC BY 3.0 [ Ссылка ]
- Animation. 1200 iterations of the ‘Rule 110’ Automata [ Ссылка ] by Mr. Heretic licenced under CC BY-SA 3.0 [ Ссылка ]
- Bundesarchiv Bild183-R57262, Werner Heisenberg [ Ссылка ] by an unknown author (Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-R57262) licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 DE [ Ссылка ]
- Turing in 1935 [ Ссылка ] by Tomipelegrin licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 [ Ссылка ]
- Gospers glider gun [ Ссылка ] by Lucas Vieira [ Ссылка ] licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 [ Ссылка ]
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The Last Theory [ Ссылка ] is hosted by Mark Jeffery [ Ссылка ] founder of the Open Web Mind [ Ссылка ]
Prefer to listen to the audio? Search for The Last Theory in your podcast player, or listen at [ Ссылка ]
The full article is at [ Ссылка ]
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