andrew_gelman_stats andrew_gelman_stats-2010 andrew_gelman_stats-2010-430 knowledge-graph by maker-knowledge-mining
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Introduction: I, like Steve Hsu , I too would love to read a definitive biography of John von Neumann (or, as we’d say in the U.S., “John Neumann”). I’ve read little things about him in various places such as Stanislaw Ulam’s classic autobiography, and two things I’ve repeatedly noticed are: 1. Neumann comes off as a obnoxious, self-satisfied jerk. He just seems like the kind of guy I wouldn’t like in real life. 2. All these great men seem to really have loved the guy. It’s hard for me to reconcile two impressions above. Of course, lots of people have a good side and a bad side, but what’s striking here is that my impressions of Neumann’s bad side come from the very stories that his friends use to demonstrate how lovable he was! So, yes, I’d like to see the biography–but only if it could resolve this paradox. Also, I don’t know how relevant this is, but Neumann shares one thing with the more-lovable Ulam and the less-lovable Mandelbrot: all had Jewish backgrounds but didn’t seem to
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1 I, like Steve Hsu , I too would love to read a definitive biography of John von Neumann (or, as we’d say in the U. [sent-1, score-0.454]
2 I’ve read little things about him in various places such as Stanislaw Ulam’s classic autobiography, and two things I’ve repeatedly noticed are: 1. [sent-4, score-0.074]
3 Neumann comes off as a obnoxious, self-satisfied jerk. [sent-5, score-0.125]
4 He just seems like the kind of guy I wouldn’t like in real life. [sent-6, score-0.524]
5 It’s hard for me to reconcile two impressions above. [sent-9, score-0.306]
6 Of course, lots of people have a good side and a bad side, but what’s striking here is that my impressions of Neumann’s bad side come from the very stories that his friends use to demonstrate how lovable he was! [sent-10, score-0.712]
7 So, yes, I’d like to see the biography–but only if it could resolve this paradox. [sent-11, score-0.072]
8 Also, I don’t know how relevant this is, but Neumann shares one thing with the more-lovable Ulam and the less-lovable Mandelbrot: all had Jewish backgrounds but didn’t seem to like to talk about it. [sent-12, score-0.141]
9 Just to calibrate, here are my impressions of some other famous twentieth-century physicists. [sent-15, score-0.225]
10 In all cases this is based on my shallow reading, not from any firsthand or even secondhand contact: Feynman: Another guy who seemed pretty unlikable. [sent-16, score-0.707]
11 Phil and I use the term “Feynman story” for any anecdote that someone tells that is structured so that the teller comes off as a genius and everyone else in the story comes off as an idiot. [sent-17, score-0.676]
12 Again, lots of people, from Ulam to Freeman Dyson on down, seemed to think Feynman was a great guy. [sent-18, score-0.149]
13 So Feynman seems like a standard case of a guy who was nice to some people and a jerk to others. [sent-20, score-0.62]
14 Einstein: Everyone seems to describe him as pretty remote, perhaps outside the whole “nice guy / jerk” spectrum entirely. [sent-21, score-0.447]
15 He doesn’t actually come off as a bad guy in any way, just someone who, for whatever reason, isn’t so lovable. [sent-25, score-0.398]
16 Fermi, Bohr, Bethe: In contrast, everyone seemed to love these guys. [sent-26, score-0.342]
17 Hawking: What can you say about a guy with this kind of disability? [sent-27, score-0.302]
18 (Sorry, I’m not very well-read when it comes to physics gossip. [sent-32, score-0.125]
19 ) Paul Erdos is another one: He always seems to be described as charmingly eccentric, but from all the descriptions I’ve read, he sounds just horrible! [sent-34, score-0.239]
20 Perhaps the key is to come into these interactions with appropriate expectations, then everything will be OK. [sent-35, score-0.083]
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Introduction: I, like Steve Hsu , I too would love to read a definitive biography of John von Neumann (or, as we’d say in the U.S., “John Neumann”). I’ve read little things about him in various places such as Stanislaw Ulam’s classic autobiography, and two things I’ve repeatedly noticed are: 1. Neumann comes off as a obnoxious, self-satisfied jerk. He just seems like the kind of guy I wouldn’t like in real life. 2. All these great men seem to really have loved the guy. It’s hard for me to reconcile two impressions above. Of course, lots of people have a good side and a bad side, but what’s striking here is that my impressions of Neumann’s bad side come from the very stories that his friends use to demonstrate how lovable he was! So, yes, I’d like to see the biography–but only if it could resolve this paradox. Also, I don’t know how relevant this is, but Neumann shares one thing with the more-lovable Ulam and the less-lovable Mandelbrot: all had Jewish backgrounds but didn’t seem to
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Introduction: Steve Hsu, who started off this discussion, had some comments on my speculations on the personality of John von Neumann and others. Steve writes: I [Hsu] actually knew Feynman a bit when I was an undergrad, and found him to be very nice to students. Since then I have heard quite a few stories from people in theoretical physics which emphasize his nastier side, and I think in the end he was quite a complicated person like everyone else. There are a couple of pseudo-biographies of vN, but none as high quality as, e.g., Gleick’s book on Feynman or Hodges book about Turing. (Gleick studied physics as an undergrad at Harvard, and Hodges is a PhD in mathematical physics — pretty rare backgrounds for biographers!) For example, as mentioned on the comment thread to your post, Steve Heims wrote a book about both vN and Wiener (!), and Norman Macrae wrote a biography of vN. Both books are worth reading, but I think neither really do him justice. The breadth of vN’s work is just too m
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