"Morgenstern was once asked how a scholar outside the mainstream of economic thinking could make a contribution as original, innovative, and decisive as Johnny's. He replied that Johnny had an extraordinary capacity for picking the brains of a person whom he engaged in casual conversations. Once he saw from these that there was a problem of sufficient mathematical interest to warrant his spending time on it, he homed on to that subject like a guided missile."
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PolymathsAcademics from the United StatesMathematicians from the United StatesAcademics from HungaryMathematicians from Hungary
Original Language: English
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Sources
Abraham Pais, in The Genius of Science: A Portrait Gallery (2000), p. 190
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_von_Neumann
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John von Neumann
John von Neumann (28 December 1903 – 8 February 1957) was a Hungarian-American-Jewish mathematician, physicist, inventor, computer scientist, and polymath. He made major contributions to a number of fields, including mathematics (foundations of mathematics, functional analysis, ergodic theory, geometry, set theory, topology, and numerical analysis), physics (quantum mechanics, hydrodynamics and quantum statistical mechanics), economics (game theory), computing (Von Neumann architecture, linear p
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