The story of Von Neumann's death is actually quite interesting. The government kept a guard by his death bed to be sure he didn't divulge any state secrets while on mind numbing pain medications. It is well documented that, after Von Neumann learned of his terminal pancreatic cancer, he became horrified of death and would cry out at night, even resorting to last-minute conversations with a priest on his deathbed (though he was an atheist throughout his life). His mother died during his illness and his family tried to hide it from him. But he eventually figured it out and took a turn for the worst. It's all very sad in the same way it would be for anyone, but in Von Neumann's case it makes one wonder what else he would've accomplished in the next two or three decades of life.
One supposes a man such as him would be able to accept death with equanimity. This is backwards. As he was losing much more in death than most of us will; he was far more alive than most anyone has ever been.
Russell was 97. Feynman was 69 and was in treatment the last decade of his life. von Neumann went from diagnosis to dead in a little over a year. He was 53.
> The government kept a guard by his death bed to be sure he didn't divulge any state secrets while on mind numbing pain medications.
i am curious of the logistics of this. if they were there, outside of his room, to simply safeguard against the visit of unauthorized visitors during his weak moments, this seems like it could work in a way that doesn't interrupt his last moments with friends and family.
if they were literally at his bed safeguarding information, that seems quite intrusive for someone who did monumental tasks for the government. and it isn't even clear what their gameplan would be in this case. do they instruct a potentially non-coherent person to shut-up or the nurses to put him out?
> if they were literally at his bed safeguarding information, that seems quite intrusive for someone who did monumental tasks for the government. and it isn't even clear what their gameplan would be in this case.
The British state forcibly sterilized Turing who was instrumental in the allied war effort in a greater or equal capacity to von Neumann. "Quite intrusive" is a monumental understatement of what governments will do to protect their perceived interests.
I've always wondered. What kind of government secrets were they worried he'd let slip? It's been so long that they must be declassified by now. His breadth of expertise was so great, it'd be interesting to know what kind of contributions he was making to the government.
von Neumann played a major role in the development of the nuclear weapons. Not just the Manhattan project, but also in the development of the hydrogen bomb and ICBMs. It's pretty likely that those are the secrets the government was guarding in 1953.
I doubt much if anything interesting by von Neumann is still classified or limited. If something is still classified it's probably because no one wanted to declassify it, not that it's sensitive.
If anyone does file FOIA requests for these lists, contact me, as I'm interested but not interested enough to file the requests. See my HN profile for a link to my personal website with a contact form.
I think that you might be underestimating his work. He was not just a physicist, but a system's integrator when it came to the military. He almost single-handedly structured our deterrence stance. There were von Neumann committees where he shaped the heart of American nuclear and ICBM policy. https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a416289.pdf
He also designed The Critical Component that's kept classified by most governments. These lenses are what compress plutonium to trigger the reaction in a fission device and they're also used in other manners for fusion weapons.
von Neumann did so much and knew so much that we might never know the extent of his true contributions to applied science.
Thanks for the comment and the links. You may be right. My comment was based on what I am familiar with that was previously classified. (All of which has been since declassified, so there's probably sampling bias.) I don't know much about nuclear weapons, or von Neumann's involvement in them for that matter.
No problem! There's no way for us to know about things that are so classified that only a few people have seen it all. NSA hacks aside, the US Government keeps a tight lid on these sorts of things. All we get to see are the papers and rumors from the periphery.
I highly recommend the Nuclear Secrecy blog if you'd like to learn more! It's totally like being in a teenage clique that's playing a game of chinese whispers, with the added side bonus of nuclear weapons and global annihilation. Come for the clique, stay for the nuclear winter.
Also, you could look at George Dyson’s (son of Freeman) book about von Neumann, “Turing’s Cathedral”. Included is detail about the early computer he developed that did the hydrogen bomb hydrodynamic calculations for the Los Alamos lab.
Anyone actually doing this, please use https://www.muckrock.com for your FOIA. It'll save you effort and everyone else who wants the same information, too.
>It is well documented that, after Von Neumann learned of his terminal pancreatic cancer, he became horrified of death and would cry out at night, even resorting to last-minute conversations with a priest on his deathbed (though he was an atheist throughout his life).
Oh man this is utterly terrifying for me as I always hoped that the fear of death would diminish with age. It's horribly terrifying to me that he was horribly terrified of death at an advanced age.
A lot of people (especially atheists, like me) have an oversimplified concept of dying. One can be perfectly atheist and realize that apart from the waking horrors of a decaying body, the experience of death itself can still be enormously horrible in certain ways of dying.
I highly recommend the movie "A Pure Formality", if you like to trivialize death! It's the worst horror movie I have seen, and there is absolutely zero blood, slashing, nor sudden scare moments... and yet I assure you it is the biggest horror, it is pure psychological horror.
I am very happy that I have seen this movie, somehow knowing how horrible something can be sort of mentally prepares you for it...
That's like saying "it's not psychopathic axe murderers I fear, but the pain they cause." No one fears words, they fear some aspect of experiential suffering. When people say they "fear death" they mean pain, discomfort, leaving loved ones behind, et. al. I think you hit upon something useful though, which is the idea that our mental wellness can change even when our physical wellness can't.
My working hypothesis is that I'm a "meat machine". When I die, it's extremely likely that I (that is, my conscious awareness) will no longer exist. That might also happen, of course, even if much of the meat lives.
Given that, I do have some existential dread about death. And that's distinct from the process of dying, the hassle and pain involved, and so on.
So I do fear murderers, because they'll kill me. But I fear torturers more, because they cause pain. And more. They do irrevocable stuff, injuries that can never heal. So it's like they can kill you, over and over, little bits at a time. And in a way, those realizations of irrevocable loss are worse than the actual pain.
Depends on the person of course. Teenagers can die with less fear than 90 year olds. It is often seen as "ignoble" (to quote Bertrand Russell) for an older person to fear death. But it's a universal experience, so spending a little time during life trying to prepare for your end (especially while you're healthy) may be well spent.
53 isn't all that advanced, and certainly in the "too young to die" category for me.
To compare it to an example much closer to me, my mother died of pancreatic cancer at 69, about 3 months after diagnosis. The whole family was in shock, but she seemed surprisingly at peace with it. She'd always been worried about her health, but after this diagnosis, she was calmer than I'd ever known her.
(I miss her badly, though. I want my youngest son to know her, but he never will.)
So what? His death was the saddest thing that could happen to a brilliant man. I only dream what would have been if he lived same age as Bertrand Russell (97). Both are incredible minds.
I'm pretty sure 'theaeolist meant that, since von Neumann died young (53 actually), that he never had the chance to even reach an "advanced age" where you might expect the fear of death to have lessened.
If you have no hope after death, I wonder why one might argue that a 97 year old person would have less fear than a 53 year old. If you fear death to begin with, I would assume the increased probability of dying by the year would increase the fear. I have hope after death and don't fear it, but the consequence of death is still more present in my mind than it was 10 years ago . . .
I don't think the issue really is a fear of death, but a fear of dying before you've been able to do what you wanted to do with your life.
At 97, most people have probably long accepted that they're well past their peak, they've accomplished everything they're going to accomplish and even if they continue to live for another 10 years, they're unlikely to add anything dramatic to it. Their life is pretty much complete. Von Neumann at 53, despite the many things he had accomplished already, probably had tons more he wanted to do. His life was not remotely complete.
