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Episode Link: https://share.snipd.com/episode/f47063bb-d753-4370-94ca-f477bf04ddc5 Episode publish date: August 31, 2025 12:41 PM (PDT) Last edit date: October 26, 2025 10:44 AM Last snip date: October 26, 2025 10:42 AM (PDT) Last sync date: October 26, 2025 10:43 AM (PDT) Show: The Man from the Future: The Visionary Life of John von Neumann Snips: 13 Warning: ⚠️ Any content within the episode information, snip blocks might be updated or overwritten by Snipd in a future sync. Add your edits or additional notes outside these blocks to keep them safe.

• Episode show notes

  Part 4 of 10 of The Man from the Future: The Visionary Life of John von Neumann

Your snips

[01:16] Von Neumann’s Proposal

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Von Neumann’s Proposal

• Von Neumann proposed to Mariette by saying they could have a lot of fun together because they both liked wine.

• They married on New Year’s Day, 1930, and sailed to America, where Mariette spent the voyage seasick.

• 📚 Transcript

  Speaker 1

  Von Neumann proposed in his way two years later. You and I could have a lot of fun together, he told her. For instance, you like to drink wine, and so do I. The two were married on New Year’s Day, 1930, and sailed to America on a luxury liner. Mariette, horribly seasick, was confined to her quarters for the whole voyage. House hunting did not go well at first either. Despite the generous salary Princeton was paying, nothing within their budget could match the European grandeur to which they were accustomed. How could I do good mathematics in a place like this? Wailed von Neumann when they went to view some of the places for rent. They finally settled

[02:13] Von Neumann’s Driving

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Von Neumann’s Driving

• Von Neumann enjoyed driving despite never passing a test and frequently totaling cars, preferring Cadillacs because no one would sell him a tank.

• An intersection in Princeton was nicknamed ‘Von Neumann Corner’ due to his numerous accidents.

• 📚 Transcript

  Speaker 1

  There were no cafes for mathematicians to congregate, so Mariette entertained von Neumann’s colleagues at home. Next, there was the problem of getting about. Von Neumann enjoyed driving very much, but had never passed a test. At Mariette’s suggestion, he bribed a driving examiner. This did nothing to improve his driving. He sped along crowded roads as if there were many body problems to be negotiated by calculating the best route through on the fly. He often failed, and an intersection in Princeton was soon christened Von Neumann Corner on account of the many accidents he had there. Bored on open roads, he slowed down. When conversation faltered, he would sing, swaying and rocking the steering wheel from side to side with him. The couple would buy a new car every year, usually because von Neumann had totaled the previous one. His vehicle of choice was a Cadillac. Because, he explained, whenever anyone asked, no one would sell me a tank. Miraculously,

[02:20] Von Neumann’s Driving

🎧 Play snip - 3min (02:20 - 05:20)

Von Neumann’s Driving

• Von Neumann, who never passed a driving test, drove recklessly, causing accidents at an intersection in Princeton dubbed ‘Von Neumann Corner’.

• He bought a new Cadillac every year because he totaled the previous one, joking he couldn’t buy a tank.

• 📚 Transcript

  Speaker 1

  Next, there was the problem of getting about. Von Neumann enjoyed driving very much, but had never passed a test. At Mariette’s suggestion, he bribed a driving examiner. This did nothing to improve his driving. He sped along crowded roads as if there were many body problems to be negotiated by calculating the best route through on the fly. He often failed, and an intersection in Princeton was soon christened Von Neumann Corner on account of the many accidents he had there. Bored on open roads, he slowed down. When conversation faltered, he would sing, swaying and rocking the steering wheel from side to side with him. The couple would buy a new car every year, usually because von Neumann had totaled the previous one. His vehicle of choice was a Cadillac. Because, he explained, whenever anyone asked, no one would sell me a tank. Miraculously, he escaped largely unscathed from these mash-ups, often returning with the unlikeliest of explanations. I was proceeding down the road, begins one fabulous excuse. The trees on the right were passing me in orderly fashion at sixty miles an hour. Suddenly one of them stepped in my path. Boom! The only worst driver in Princeton was Wigner. Overcautious rather than reckless, Wigner would roll along as far to the right as he could manage, sometimes causing pedestrians to scatter by mounting the curb. A Princeton graduate student named Horner Cooper was asked to teach Wigner how to drive properly. Mariette would leave Johnny for Cooper in 1937. On the 28th of January 1933, two days before Hitler became Chancellor of Germany, John von Neumann became a beneficiary of Weblen’s largesse with other people’s money. Weblen had long dreamed of an independent mathematics institute where scholars on huge salaries could think big thoughts unburdened from any irksome teaching commitments.

  He had shared his vision with Abraham Flexner, an influential expert on higher education who helped to secure the Rockefeller Foundation’s cash to help build Princeton’s fine hall. Flexner returned to him with more good news. The German-Jewish owners of Bambergers, a chain of department store, had sold up to R.H. Macy& Co. And wanted to spend some of the proceeds on a new school for higher learning. For its first six years, the Institute for Advanced Study, IAS, was housed in Fine Hall. Flexner was appointed the Institute’s first director in May 1930 with a salary of nearly $400,000 in modern terms. He hired Veblen as its first professor in 1932.

[05:29] IAS Salaries

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IAS Salaries

• Von Neumann joined the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) at 29 with no teaching obligations.

• His salary was $10,000, close to $200,000 today, leading to it being nicknamed the ‘Institute for Advanced Salaries’.

• 📚 Transcript

  Speaker 1

  So too did von Neumann and his fellow mathematicians Hermann and James Alexander. Von Neumann was 29 when he moved to the IAS from Princeton, the youngest of the new recruits. There was no obligation to teach. Indeed, there were no students, and staff were required to be on the premises for only half the year. The remainder of the time they were officially on leave. Senior professors like Einstein earned $16,000, while an ordinary professor like von Neumann received an annual salary of $10,000, close to $200,000 today. A pretty sum now, and in Depression-era America almost obscene.

[06:10] Institute for Advanced Salaries

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Institute for Advanced Salaries

• The Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) was mockingly called the Institute for Advanced Salaries due to the high salaries and lack of teaching obligations.

• Some professors, unused to this lifestyle, became unproductive, as highlighted by Richard Feynman.

• 📚 Transcript

  Speaker 1

  A pretty sum now, and in Depression-era America almost obscene. Envious Princetonians dubbed the moneyed academy a stone’s throw away, the Institute for Advanced Salaries, and the Institute for Advanced Lunch. Unused to the gilded existence, some professors would lapse into somnolence. These poor bastards could now sit and think clearly all by themselves. OK, wrote one critic, the Nobel Prize winning physicist Richard Feynman. They have every opportunity to do something and they’re not getting any ideas. Nothing happens because there’s not enough real activity and challenge. You’re not in contact with the experimental guys. You don’t have to think how to answer questions from the student. Nothing. Einstein would spend his Princeton years in unfruitful

[14:00] Von Neumann’s Personality

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Von Neumann’s Personality

• Ulam described Von Neumann’s eyes as brown, large, vivacious, and full of expression and noted his impressively large head and waddling walk.

• Ulam also observed that Von Neumann felt most comfortable with third or fourth generation wealthy Jews.

• 📚 Transcript

  Speaker 1

  The first thing that struck me about him were his eyes, brown, large, vivacious, and full of expression. His head was impressively large. He had a sort of waddling walk. Von Neumann offered Ulam a stipend to come to the IAS for a few months. He was ill at ease with people who were self-made or came from modest backgrounds, says Ulam von Neumann in Princeton. He felt most comfortable with third or fourth generation wealthy Jews. Von Neumann’s home life was difficult, Ulam noted. He may not have been an easy

[36:55] 21sec Snip

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  Speaker 1

  The massive effort to build the atom bomb, codenamed Project Y, would cost the US $2 billion, more than $20 billion today, and at its height employ more than 100,000 people. In September 1942, the 46-year army engineer Leslie Groves was appointed to lead it.

[37:17] Oppenheimer’s Selection

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Oppenheimer’s Selection

• Despite Oppenheimer’s lack of management experience and left-wing associations, General Groves chose him to head the top-secret laboratory for developing the atom bomb.

• Oppenheimer’s communist ties would later be used to strip him of his security clearance, ending his government work.

• 📚 Transcript

  Speaker 1

  The very next month, Groves chose Oppenheimer to head the top-secret laboratory that would develop the bomb. Oppenheimer was not an obvious choice. A theorist with little experience of managing a large team, he would somehow have to exert his authority over scientists, many of whom had Nobel Prizes. Worst of all, from the military’s standpoint, he was a left-winger whose closest associates, his girlfriend, wife, brother and sister-in had been and perhaps still were members Of the Communist Party. Even Oppenheimer’s landlady in Berkeley was a communist. These facts would be used to strip Oppenheimer of his security clearance in 1954, a public act of humiliation

[41:45] Implosion Design

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Implosion Design

• The implosion bomb design was initially compared to blowing in a beer can without splattering the beer.

• Richard Feynman summarized the group’s reaction to the design by saying, “It stinks.”

• 📚 Transcript

  Speaker 1

  When Nader Meier presented his results to the scientists and engineers at Los Alamos, one compared the problem to blowing in a beer can without splattering the beer. The 24-year Feynman, recruited shortly after being awarded his PhD at Princeton, pithily summarised the group’s reaction to the design. It stinks,

[42:15] Oppenheimer’s Savvy

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Oppenheimer’s Savvy

• Oppenheimer was known for making the right decisions at the right time at Los Alamos.

• He then invited von Neumann to help with the Manhattan project.

• 📚 Transcript

  Speaker 1

  Oppenheimer would earn a reputation at Los Alamos for making the right call at the right time. His next decision would prove to be inspired. We are in what can only be described as a desperate need of your help, he wrote to von Neumann in July. We

[48:49] Human Computers

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Human Computers

• The IBM machines replaced women who used to work as human computers. Many of them were wives of physicists and engineers already working on the project.

• Groves insisted there was no more money to waste housing civilians.

• 📚 Transcript

  Speaker 1

  Groves had insisted there was no more money to waste housing civilians, so many of these human computers were the wives of physicists and engineers already working on the project. But the IBM machines did not tire and had no young children to be picked up from school or nursery. The women were superseded. For now. The spring of 1944 brought unwelcome news for the scientists racing to develop a plutonium bomb. The Jewish-Italian nuclear physicist Emilio Segre, who had worked with Fermi in Rome, had uncovered a problem with samples of plutonium produced by reactors in Hanford, Washington, And Oak Ridge, Tennessee. With three graduate students, Segre had been studying the fission rates of plutonium batches in a log cabin some 14 miles from Los Alamos. Within days of receiving their first batch of reactor plutonium, the team found spontaneous fission rates to be five times higher than that from cyclotrons. As Oppenheimer had feared, a gun-type weapon made with plutonium would not work. The thin man device was abandoned. Oppenheimer’s intuitive decision to call on von Neumann’s expertise six months earlier now paid dividends.

[01:09:04] Von Neumann’s View on Nuclear Arms

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Von Neumann’s View on Nuclear Arms

• Von Neumann supported the development of nuclear arms to counter Stalin’s Soviet Union.

• He feared a Soviet invasion and occupation of Japan, which he believed would give Stalin an outpost in the Pacific.

• 📚 Transcript

  Speaker 1

  Von Neumann had no such qualms. His first-hand experience of Bela Kunz-Hungary and what he had seen of Nazi Germany instilled in him a horror of totalitarian dictatorship. With Germany defeated, he now felt that the greatest threat to world peace was Stalin’s Soviet Union. Only the speedy and determined development of nuclear arms would keep Stalin in check. Otherwise, the war might end with the Soviet invasion and occupation of Japan, giving Stalin an outpost in the Pacific.

[01:14:47] Nagasaki Survivor

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Nagasaki Survivor

• Shigeko Matsumoto, a survivor in Nagasaki, recalls the sky turning bright white at 11.02 and being violently slammed into the bomb shelter.

• She remembers heavily injured burn victims stumbling into the shelter, with skin peeled off and unbearable stench and heat.

• 📚 Transcript

  Speaker 1

  Just 800 yards from ground zero in Nagasaki, Shigeko Matsumoto was one of the lucky survivors. My siblings and I played in front of the bomb shelter entrance, waited to be picked up by our grandfather, she recalls. Then, at 11.02, the sky turned bright white. My siblings and I were knocked off our feet and violently slammed back into the bomb shelter. We had no idea what had happened. As we sat there, shell-shocked and confused, heavily injured burn victims came stumbling into the bomb shelter en masse. “‘Their skin had peeled off their bodies and faces and hung limply down on the ground, in ribbons. “‘Their hair was burnt down to a few measly centimetres from the scalp. “‘Many of the victims collapsed as soon as they reached the bomb shelter entrance, “‘forming a massive pile of contorted bodies. “‘The stench and heat were unbearable. My siblings and I