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Who was the most influential scientist? · Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe

• 0:07
  Speaker 1: Hey, Daniel, how many physicists are there in the world
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: right now?
• 0:11
  Speaker 2: Ooh, good question. I think there are about ten thousand
• 0:14
  Speaker 2: physics professors just in the US.
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: WHOA, but that's a lot of physics professors though, And now,
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: how would you rank them if you had to rank them?
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: That depends how you rain by height, by hygiene, by
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: number of Nobel Prizes, so many different directions.
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: I don't think you want to rate them by hygiene.
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: I don't want to be the president who does that survey.
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: I don't know what's more embarrassing most hygienic physicists or at.
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: Least yeah, and which one gives you more cred as
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: a physicist?
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: I want to know the correlation between hygiene and Nobel Prizes.
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: Well, that's a good metric, maybe Nobel prizes. Has anyone
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: won more than one Nobel Prize in physics?
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: One guy won the Nobel Prize twice. John Bardeen won
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: in fifty six and seventy two. And there are some
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: families where fathers and sons wanted.
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: Must be quite a bookcase there in their house. But
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: there must be a huge number of physicists who haven't
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: won a Nobel Prize.
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: Most of us.
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: I guess maybe you could rank yourself as the number
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: one physicists in the world named Daniel Whitson.
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: I mean, I hope so.
• 1:20
  Speaker 3: Have you looked?
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: Are there any other I mean there must be other
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: Daniel Whitson's out there.
• 1:25
  Speaker 3: Could one of them be a physicist?
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: There aren't many of us. I have a distant cousin
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: in the UK named Daniel Whitson who's an artist.
• 1:31
  Speaker 3: And then if they listen to this podcast and the
• 1:33
  Speaker 3: technically they would be physicists too.
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: I have some competition.
• 1:36
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I'll rank you both in the artistic ability.
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: Sounds good.
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: I am Horehemmerk, cartoonists and the author of Oliver's Great
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: Big Universe.
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist and until recently I
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: thought I was probably the number one Daniel Whitson particle
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: physicist in the world.
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: Until recently, you mean, like thirty seconds ago. Mm hm,
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: yeah exactly. I just got downgraded. Yeah, well, maybe you
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: need to take out the competition, cut off the podcast
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: so that the other Daniel Whitson can't listen.
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: No, I want to create more physicists, man, I'm just
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: gonna have to work on my artistic skills to round
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: out my portfolio.
• 2:25
  Speaker 3: I thought you were going to say you wanted to
• 2:26
  Speaker 3: create more. Daniel Whitson's how's that going.
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: Well, I'm married to a biologist, so let's see if
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: she can get cloning to work in the lab.
• 2:35
  Speaker 3: Oh man, But if she clones you, would you still
• 2:39
  Speaker 3: be with you? What if she picks a clone? What
• 2:42
  Speaker 3: if she finds you the number two Daniel Whitson version.
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: If we're clones, aren't we all the same? Are you
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: gonna share credit? You know, it's just red me to
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: take care of stuff.
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: I don't know that this is an existential question, Daniel.
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: Once the clone is created and they have a different
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: experience of the world, they're technically a different Daniel.
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: M And that's true. I guess we'll have to ask
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: them what they think.
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, or your wife, I guess let's get her on. Well,
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: first she has to clone you, which might be a
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: little tricky and ethically questionable. Absolutely, but anyways, Welcome to
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: our podcast, Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe, a production
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio in which we do our best to clone
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: our curiosity and our joy for uncovering the mysteries of
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: the universe. We want everyone out there to feel like
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: a physicist, to think like a physicist, and to be
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: a physicist, to use your brain to develop mathematical models
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: of how the universe works and to bring it to bear,
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: to master the universe in your own mind.
• 3:36
  Speaker 3: That's right.
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: We serve the entire universe and we try to find
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: the biggest, the baddest, the most interesting questions out there
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: about how everything works and how the cosmos is put
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: together to bring to you here on the podcast.
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: Because everybody deserves to understand the universe and to participate
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: in unraveling its mysteries. Some of the greatest minds in
• 3:56
  Speaker 2: history were not people who were academics or men of
• 3:59
  Speaker 2: the figuring out the way the universe worked. They were
• 4:02
  Speaker 2: just curious people who taught themselves to think about the
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: nature of reality.
• 4:06
  Speaker 3: That's right.
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: There are a lot of amazing questions out there to
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: ask in a lot of minds that have put their
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: amazing powers of observation and experiments to try to figure
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: out these answers. And so it's been an incredible history
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: of humankind trying to find the solution to the biggest
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: questions in the universe.
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: And when we look back at the story of how
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: humans have figured it all out. There are some names
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: that stand out among the others. Of course, there are
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: thousands of people toiling in anonymity, but a few people
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: have really changed the course of science, really pivoted the
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: way all humans thought about the nature of the world.
• 4:40
  Speaker 2: Of course, people like Newton and Einstein and Galileo come
• 4:43
  Speaker 2: to mind, but there are many, many more.
• 4:45
  Speaker 3: Jam as well.
• 4:46
  Speaker 2: Right, I was about to say, cham absolutely, yes, crest
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: me off. It's alphabetical. Okay, maybe not alphabetical, but there
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: are some bold face names that really have changed the
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: way everybody thinks about the nature of our universe.
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, a lot of influential scientists out there throughout history,
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: and so a question that you can ask is how
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: do they rank in terms of their influence in science,
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: just like I guess people rank sports stars.
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: Right, there is this whole ridiculous cottage industry of like
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: asking who is the greatest of all time? You know,
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: is it Kobe Bryant, is it Lebron James, is it
• 5:22
  Speaker 2: Michael Jordan? Is it Larry Bird? Everybody's got somebody in
• 5:25
  Speaker 2: their camp arguing for them.
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: Who's the goat, greatest of all time exactly.
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: And mostly I think it's not actually serious. They don't
• 5:33
  Speaker 2: really care who's number one. It's just like a fun
• 5:35
  Speaker 2: way to have a conversation and to talk about these
• 5:38
  Speaker 2: inspiring figures.
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: I think some people care a lot about these rankings
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: and who's the goat in basketball and baseball?
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: So who's the greatest cartoonist of all time?
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: Were he?
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: Well?
• 5:49
  Speaker 3: Cham comes to mind obviously?
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: Which Cham was that again?
• 5:54
  Speaker 3: The famous one?
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: Okay, you mean Cham on Twitter? Whoever that is?
• 5:59
  Speaker 3: Yeah, there's another hoe Cham.
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: You told me there's some other guy who owns atjogete
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: cham on Twitter.
• 6:05
  Speaker 3: Oh no, I think somebody just opened that as me.
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: It could be another hohrgete Cham.
• 6:10
  Speaker 3: They stole me.
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah no, no, it's pretty clear they're trying to me.
• 6:16
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, or unless he isn't me, maybe I don't know.
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: Maybe he's your clone. But the back to the question,
• 6:23
  Speaker 2: who is the greatest cartoonist of all time? Other than
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: Jorge Cham? Oh?
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: Well, it probably depends on who you ask, but I
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: would probably say Waterson, Calvin Hobbs.
• 6:33
  Speaker 2: Probably yeah, solid answer.
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Peanuts, maybe Charles Schultz, those are all up there.
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: But yeah, you can also maybe try to do that
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: with scientists.
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: Right, Absolutely, you can, and we're going to try so.
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: To the end of the podcast, we'll be asking the
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: question who was the most influential scientist? Are you trying
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: to make scientists influencers?
• 6:57
  Speaker 3: Daniel?
• 6:58
  Speaker 2: Here, I'm trying to make some scientists as cool as
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: sports stars. You know, there should be like science bars
• 7:04
  Speaker 2: where people drink beer and argue loudly about who was
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: the greatest scientist of all time?
• 7:08
  Speaker 4: Hmm.
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: Interesting Now if that greatest scientist happens to not be
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: a physicist, though, what did you be offended or like?
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: Are we asking scientists in general just greatest physicists?
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: I think scientists Some of the folks that listeners mentioned
• 7:21
  Speaker 2: were scientists before we even really had the concept of
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: what physics was.
• 7:25
  Speaker 3: So we're going broad here.
• 7:26
  Speaker 2: Absolutely.
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: And I noticed you put this question in the past tense,
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: who was the most influential scientist? Do you think maybe
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: the most influential scientists could be alive today or are
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: we only looking at dead people?
• 7:37
  Speaker 2: Oh that's a great point. I hadn't even thought about that.
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: I'm reflecting my own bias here. I guess I was
• 7:42
  Speaker 2: thinking about people who had an impact on history, and
• 7:45
  Speaker 2: it's hard for somebody who just had an idea today
• 7:49
  Speaker 2: to have an impact on history the way Einstein did,
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: for example, So I think it takes a little while
• 7:54
  Speaker 2: for that impact play out well.
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: As usual, we were wondering how many people out there
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: had thought about this question or have an opinion, beer
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: or not about who is the most influential scientist.
• 8:04
  Speaker 2: Thanks very much to everybody who participates in this segment
• 8:07
  Speaker 2: of the podcast. We really appreciate your time, energy, and enthusiasm.
• 8:11
  Speaker 2: If you'd like to share yours for the podcast, please
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: don't be shy. Write to me two questions at Daniel
• 8:16
  Speaker 2: and Jorge dot com. So think about it for a second.
• 8:18
  Speaker 2: Who do you think is the most influential scientist? And
• 8:22
  Speaker 2: I'm going to just give you the little suggestion that
• 8:23
  Speaker 2: maybe I am one of the most influential scientists. But
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: here's what people had to say. My guess would be
• 8:31
  Speaker 2: the mathematician Urdos. I think it was Copernicus.
• 8:35
  Speaker 5: I would say it was Nicholas Fleming, who fond about antibiotics.
• 8:40
  Speaker 2: I would say Einstein.
• 8:42
  Speaker 6: I think it has to be honest with Sonedjate reaction Einstein.
• 8:44
  Speaker 6: But then when you start thinking about it, You've got
• 8:46
  Speaker 6: likes of Faraday and Newton and Baul shortly out what
• 8:51
  Speaker 6: box would you put him in? And could you tell
• 8:53
  Speaker 6: he was in the box without opening it?
• 8:54
  Speaker 3: Galileo Newton and Einstein.
• 8:57
  Speaker 5: Albert Einstein stands out Newton because it all starts with him.
• 9:03
  Speaker 2: Einstein's the winner there.
• 9:04
  Speaker 3: Charles Starwin, Charles Darwin, Bill Ny the Science Guy saying
• 9:08
  Speaker 3: he's the best, with Daniel of course coming in a
• 9:11
  Speaker 3: close second.
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: Every all right, some interesting answers and a lot of
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: names you might expect Isaac Newton, Einstein, Galileo Darwin, Bill Ny,
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: the science guy, Bill Ny, who's not actually a scientist
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: by training.
• 9:29
  Speaker 3: He's an engineer, which I think makes him even cooler.
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: Mmm. Wow, that's pretty influential.
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: But yeah, a lot of common names you might expect.
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: Aristotle as well. Was he technically a scientist or a philosopher?
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a long debate about when the science began
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: and who's doing science and who's doing philosophy and the
• 9:45
  Speaker 2: exact distinction between them, which always comes down to arguing
• 9:48
  Speaker 2: about definitions.
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: So how are we going to rank people then if
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: we don't even have a solid definition of science.
• 9:55
  Speaker 2: I think most of the time in these conversations is
• 9:57
  Speaker 2: spent arguing about how to argue about it. Really, that's
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: the core question. It's like, how do you measure this?
• 10:03
  Speaker 2: I know?
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I guess that happens in sports too, like
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: most trophies, most the games, more points.
• 10:11
  Speaker 2: Can you really be the greatest of all times if
• 10:13
  Speaker 2: you never want a championship even if you have the
• 10:15
  Speaker 2: scoring record? You know, how is Einstein's dribble against Galileo's rebounding?
• 10:20
  Speaker 2: This kind of stuff?
• 10:22
  Speaker 4: Yeah?
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And so what are we going to use on
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: the podcast here today? Where are we just going to
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: argue about how to measure the influence?
• 10:29
  Speaker 2: Well? I thought I was kind of looking forward to
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: arguing about how to measure it.
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you might have some opinions, So I see, we're
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: not actually going to answer the question of the episode
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: as usual.
• 10:43
  Speaker 3: I want to argue got it now?
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: I think probably lots of people have different opinions about
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: who might be the most influential, But to me, I
• 10:52
  Speaker 2: think the question is like who has shifted the course
• 10:54
  Speaker 2: of human history or human thought the most? Who would
• 10:57
  Speaker 2: have the most impact if you'd like deleted them from the.
• 10:59
  Speaker 3: Historical record, assuming that nobody else would have figured it out.
• 11:02
  Speaker 2: I guess, well, that is the question. You know, if
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: you figured out something awesome, but there were ten people
• 11:07
  Speaker 2: right on your tails about to figure it out, then
• 11:10
  Speaker 2: did you really have a singular impact on the field.
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: You just sort of like in first place, by zero
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: point oh one seconds, you didn't really have that much
• 11:17
  Speaker 2: of an impact on human history by that metric. But
• 11:20
  Speaker 2: there might be some people who had a singular vision,
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: who had an idea that nobody else was capable of,
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: and if you deleted them from human history, it might
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: take hundreds of years before we figured that thing out.
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: It sounds like you're also just kind of thinking in
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: terms of our thoughts and our theories about science and
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: how the world works. I wonder if you thought about
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: maybe like live say that could be another way to
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: measure the impact of a scientist.
• 11:45
  Speaker 2: Or you could also go darker and think about lives lost.
• 11:48
  Speaker 2: You know, some of our most influential scientists helped develop
• 11:51
  Speaker 2: nuclear weapons technology, for example, or other kinds of weapons
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: technology that resulted in lots of deaths.
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: Oh, we're also going dark We're also maybe consider during
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: the warst scientists I mean.
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: We just said influential, We didn't say have a positive influence, right.
• 12:08
  Speaker 2: For example, if you create a doomsday device and destroy
• 12:11
  Speaker 2: the entire planet, that's pretty influential.
• 12:13
  Speaker 3: Right right right, you'd be the vote, the worst of
• 12:16
  Speaker 3: all time.
• 12:18
  Speaker 2: It's just the magnitude, not the sign that matters here.
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: I feel like though, just by posing the question, we're
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: implying some sort of positive influence.
• 12:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think so. I mean, most scientists out there
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: are trying to improve our lives, either specifically through developing
• 12:32
  Speaker 2: some technology that makes life easier or more productive, or
• 12:36
  Speaker 2: just in sheer understanding the nature of the universe. I
• 12:39
  Speaker 2: think science overall has a positive goal, and most scientists
• 12:43
  Speaker 2: have had a positive impact on.
• 12:45
  Speaker 3: Our experience, right right. Nobody wants to be the vote.
• 12:48
  Speaker 2: Nobody wants to be the vote.
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: Although I noticed you said most scientists want to have
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: a positive impact.
• 12:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, most of us at all. Not all. I mean,
• 12:56
  Speaker 2: there's the guy who invented lead in gasoline, for example,
• 12:59
  Speaker 2: he made a whole generation dumber.
• 13:01
  Speaker 3: M Maybe he was the most influential signer.
• 13:04
  Speaker 2: It could be, or it could have been the guy
• 13:07
  Speaker 2: who figured that out and saved the next generation afterwards.
• 13:10
  Speaker 2: There's so many ways to measure it. You know, within academia,
• 13:13
  Speaker 2: we have our own metrics. Like if you're a professor
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: and you're going up for promotion, then there are ways
• 13:18
  Speaker 2: they measure your performance, all of which are deeply flawed,
• 13:22
  Speaker 2: you know, like number of papers or number of citations
• 13:25
  Speaker 2: of your paper. And then they have fancy metrics. One
• 13:28
  Speaker 2: of them is called an H index, which is number
• 13:31
  Speaker 2: of papers that have at least that many citations. So
• 13:34
  Speaker 2: if you have an H index of one hundred, it
• 13:35
  Speaker 2: means you have one hundred papers with at least one
• 13:37
  Speaker 2: hundred citations for example.
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a famous index in academia. Have you measured yours, Daniel.
• 13:43
  Speaker 2: Oh, I have a ridiculous H index because I have
• 13:45
  Speaker 2: more than a thousand papers because I'm a member of
• 13:48
  Speaker 2: the Atlas collaboration without dozens and dozens of papers every year.
• 13:53
  Speaker 2: So it's just totally a broken metric for somebody like me.
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: But if you exclude those crazy collaboration papers, isn't there
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: like an adjustment factor or like a handicap.
• 14:02
  Speaker 2: So my official H index is two hundred and eight,
• 14:05
  Speaker 2: which is pretty bonkers.
• 14:07
  Speaker 3: That's including the big collaboration papers.
• 14:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's including the big collaboration papers. So it's not real.
• 14:12
  Speaker 2: I mean, just to calibrate. Somebody like Ed Witten, probably
• 14:15
  Speaker 2: the smartest guy on the planet right now, has an
• 14:17
  Speaker 2: h index of one eighty seven.
• 14:19
  Speaker 3: I haven't heard of him, so I guess he maybe's
• 14:21
  Speaker 3: not that influential.
• 14:23
  Speaker 2: He basically invented string theory and won the Fields Medal,
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: which is the best prize in mathematics as a physicist,
• 14:29
  Speaker 2: So definitely a smart dude.
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: Well, that's another way to measure things with prizes. You
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: said there's a physicist who's won it twice.
• 14:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there is one physicist who's won the Nobel Prize twice,
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: and overall there are only like two hundred physicists who've
• 14:42
  Speaker 2: ever won the Physics Nobel Prize.
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: But only one that has won it twice. M yeah,
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: maybe this person is the goat. Maybe, But the Nobel
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: Prize is famously a flawed metric. I mean, super smart people,
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: very well deserving like Vera Rubin and Jocelyn Burnell never
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: won the Nobel Prize, probably because it's by a panel
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: of dudes, and so it's famously biased against women and
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: other underrepresented minorities. So maybe not the best metric, right.
• 15:08
  Speaker 3: It's also biased against Daniel Whitson, which means it totally
• 15:11
  Speaker 3: flawed obviously.
• 15:13
  Speaker 2: No, it's probably actually biased towards me being a white
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: male Jew. So if I haven't won the Nobel Prize
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: so far, it's just my fault.
• 15:20
  Speaker 3: Well, who's this person who's won it twice? I mean,
• 15:22
  Speaker 3: what did they win it for?
• 15:23
  Speaker 2: Well, he was a physicist and an electrical engineer. He
• 15:26
  Speaker 2: won it in fifty six for the invention of the
• 15:28
  Speaker 2: transistor and then in seventy two for a theory of
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: super conductivity. So definitely a smart guy. What's his name,
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: John Bardeen?
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: John Bardeen invented the transistor, won the Nobel Prize for that,
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: and then he invented super conductivity.
• 15:42
  Speaker 2: He invented a theory to explain super conductivity. It's called
• 15:45
  Speaker 2: the BCS theory. He's the b and BCS theory.
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: So without this person, maybe we wouldn't have transistors, which
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: means we wouldn't have computers.
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah, pretty influential.
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: Wow, Okay, I would put him pretty high up on
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: the Goad list, especially because he is an engineer, which
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: automatically makes him great.
• 16:04
  Speaker 2: That does score him a lot of points. Yes. Also,
• 16:08
  Speaker 2: based on his picture from Wikipedia, he looks like he
• 16:09
  Speaker 2: has pretty good hygiene.
• 16:11
  Speaker 3: Oh oh boy, Yeah, that must be his engineering side.
• 16:14
  Speaker 2: Obviously. I have to say, having been to an engineering
• 16:19
  Speaker 2: conference or two, engineers definitely dress better than physicists.
• 16:22
  Speaker 3: Oh it's not that hard. He's sitting in a little bar.
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I appreciate that. Yeah, there's just a lot more
• 16:30
  Speaker 2: ties and clean shirts at engineering conference.
• 16:32
  Speaker 3: Yeah, blazers. Engineers are big into blazers.
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: All right, Well, this is a big question. Obviously, we
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: can spend several hours just talking about how to rank these.
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: But Daniel, you happened to interview a writer who wrote
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: a book sort of about this idea of who is
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: the most influential scientist?
• 16:51
  Speaker 2: That's right. I spoke to Ananio Baticharia. He's the author
• 16:54
  Speaker 2: of a recent book called The Man from the Future,
• 16:57
  Speaker 2: and in this book he lays out the case that
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: John von Neumann might be the most influential scientist who
• 17:04
  Speaker 2: ever lived.
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: Interesting, and John van Neuman was a scientist or an
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: or an engineer or.
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: He's definitely a physicist. I don't know if he has
• 17:12
  Speaker 2: any engineering credentials, but he has incredible impact over like
• 17:17
  Speaker 2: abstract areas of mathematics, fundamental questions and quantum mechanics, he
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: invented the architecture of the modern computer. He basically wrote
• 17:24
  Speaker 2: the book on game theory. This was definitely a smart
• 17:27
  Speaker 2: and influential guy.
• 17:28
  Speaker 3: Hmmm interesting.
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: All right, Well, here's Daniel's interview with author Ananio Badicharia,
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: author of The Man from the Future.
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: So then it's my pleasure to welcome to the podcast.
• 17:51
  Speaker 2: Onna know about Acharia. He has a PhD in biophysics
• 17:54
  Speaker 2: from Imperial College in London. He's been a science correspondent
• 17:57
  Speaker 2: at The Economist and editor at Nature and medical researcher.
• 18:01
  Speaker 2: Welcome to the podcast.
• 18:03
  Speaker 5: Thanks very much, Daniel, it's a pleasure to be here.
• 18:06
  Speaker 2: So you have a background in biophysics and you work
• 18:09
  Speaker 2: as a science journalist. Help me understand why you decided
• 18:13
  Speaker 2: to write a book about von Neuman.
• 18:15
  Speaker 4: Ah.
• 18:15
  Speaker 5: Yes, Well, my undergraduate degree was physics, so I've always
• 18:21
  Speaker 5: kind of flitted from field to field. I moved from
• 18:24
  Speaker 5: one thing that I knew something about into a new
• 18:26
  Speaker 5: field that I've known nothing about. This book was pretty
• 18:29
  Speaker 5: much the same. But the longer answer, I guess is
• 18:33
  Speaker 5: that I'd been through a few journalism jobs. I'd worked
• 18:39
  Speaker 5: at Nature, and then I ended up at the economist,
• 18:43
  Speaker 5: and over the years, I found myself hearing von Neuman's
• 18:48
  Speaker 5: name in all of these incredibly different contexts. So you'd
• 18:55
  Speaker 5: have economics correspondence talking about the latest No Bell winner
• 19:01
  Speaker 5: in economics, and that there would be the game theories
• 19:03
  Speaker 5: of von Neuman's name would come up. There, there were
• 19:07
  Speaker 5: people on the tech paths of the magazine and we're
• 19:12
  Speaker 5: talking about quantum computing, and again you'd have von Noyman's
• 19:16
  Speaker 5: name mentioned in that context. And then there was artificial intelligence,
• 19:21
  Speaker 5: and you know the people that were writing stories of
• 19:25
  Speaker 5: artificial intelligence. Yeah, you know, you kind of have a
• 19:28
  Speaker 5: have to look at what von Noyman did back back then.
• 19:31
  Speaker 5: So there was this guy who turned out been dead
• 19:34
  Speaker 5: for seventy years almost and his name was coming up
• 19:40
  Speaker 5: more than ever. So I really wanted to understand why
• 19:43
  Speaker 5: that was. And when I looked into the why of this,
• 19:50
  Speaker 5: rather than look around for his biography, I discovered that
• 19:55
  Speaker 5: there hasn't really been an attempt to try and string
• 20:00
  Speaker 5: all of his ideas together and explain the relevance of
• 20:03
  Speaker 5: this person to the twenty first century. And so that's
• 20:08
  Speaker 5: what I set out to do.
• 20:10
  Speaker 2: Well. I think he did it very well. It's a
• 20:12
  Speaker 2: really fun tour of all the amazing intellectual impacts that
• 20:16
  Speaker 2: von Norman has had. And in the book you make
• 20:19
  Speaker 2: a pretty strong case for him being one of the
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: smartest people in the twentieth century, maybe one of the
• 20:25
  Speaker 2: smartest people ever, which is pretty astounding. I thought it'd
• 20:29
  Speaker 2: be fun for us to take the listeners on a
• 20:32
  Speaker 2: little bit of a tour of some of his greatest accomplishments.
• 20:35
  Speaker 2: And I want to start with something that we talk
• 20:36
  Speaker 2: about on the podcast all the time, which is quantum mechanics.
• 20:41
  Speaker 2: You're writing the book about how he didn't invent wave
• 20:44
  Speaker 2: based quantum mechanics or matrix based quantum mechanics, but he
• 20:47
  Speaker 2: did something maybe even more difficult, which is that he
• 20:49
  Speaker 2: unified them. Help us understand why that was important and
• 20:52
  Speaker 2: why it was so difficult.
• 20:53
  Speaker 5: Right, So this is kind of von Neumann's post doc.
• 20:57
  Speaker 5: Right he's at the University of Gerzingen, and he's right
• 21:01
  Speaker 5: straight after his PhD. I think he's twenty two at
• 21:05
  Speaker 5: this stage. And when he turns up at Gerzegan, I
• 21:08
  Speaker 5: think on a fellowship from the Rockefeller he's there to
• 21:11
  Speaker 5: do maths, you know, he's not there to do physics.
• 21:14
  Speaker 5: So he's there because David Hilbert is the leading figure
• 21:18
  Speaker 5: in mathematics of the of the day and he is
• 21:21
  Speaker 5: head of the maths department at Kersingham, and so von
• 21:24
  Speaker 5: Norman comes as kind of his apprentice, although in a
• 21:27
  Speaker 5: way the apprentice has already begun to outshine the master.
• 21:34
  Speaker 5: But at the same time as von Neuman's there, there's
• 21:37
  Speaker 5: another kind of vonder kind, which is Heisenberg. And Heisenberg
• 21:43
  Speaker 5: has recently invented this new science called quantum mechanics, the
• 21:48
  Speaker 5: science I guess of atoms and atomic behavior. And his
• 21:54
  Speaker 5: approach is through these matrices, which are grids of numbers. Now,
• 22:00
  Speaker 5: Heisenberg wasn't actually deeply concerned with what these matrices were
• 22:05
  Speaker 5: saying about the underlying nature of what was going on
• 22:10
  Speaker 5: in the atom, right, So he had started with atomic spectra,
• 22:15
  Speaker 5: which are like what happens when you excite an atom
• 22:20
  Speaker 5: of neon or whatever. If you give an electric shock,
• 22:25
  Speaker 5: the electrons get excited, they drop back down, and they
• 22:28
  Speaker 5: release a photon of light of a particular wavelength. And
• 22:31
  Speaker 5: so you had all these spectra of different atoms, and
• 22:34
  Speaker 5: he was kind of trying to understand those, and that's
• 22:38
  Speaker 5: how quantum mechanics really began trying to mathematize this. So
• 22:43
  Speaker 5: he had these grids of numbers that told you about
• 22:45
  Speaker 5: these different energy levels that the electrons were jumping between. Now,
• 22:49
  Speaker 5: within a few months of this version of quantum mechanics
• 22:52
  Speaker 5: coming out, there was another one, and that was by Schrodinger,
• 22:56
  Speaker 5: and that was based on waves, which physicists were much
• 23:01
  Speaker 5: more comfortable with than Heisenberg's matrices. In fact, nobody initially
• 23:08
  Speaker 5: understood what matrices were or why they should be useful
• 23:11
  Speaker 5: in this way, and it took some digging around to
• 23:15
  Speaker 5: find out. And now matrices are kind of discussed in
• 23:18
  Speaker 5: high school. Now, what von Neuman began to work on
• 23:23
  Speaker 5: was uniting these two visions because people were like, well,
• 23:27
  Speaker 5: you know, you've got these waves on the one hand,
• 23:30
  Speaker 5: and you've got matrices on the other. You've got sort
• 23:32
  Speaker 5: of electrons jumping around from between energy levels in Heisenberg's
• 23:37
  Speaker 5: theory and enschroedingers you've got this idea that maybe particles
• 23:42
  Speaker 5: have wave like properties. So which one is it? And
• 23:45
  Speaker 5: what von Neuman does is he digs down to maths
• 23:47
  Speaker 5: and he proves mathematically that these are essentially two sides
• 23:51
  Speaker 5: of the same coin. And this is kind of like, and.
• 23:55
  Speaker 2: Was it clear to everybody that that was going to
• 23:57
  Speaker 2: be possible. I mean, I remember reading that this was
• 23:59
  Speaker 2: sort of an acrimonious to be there was no love
• 24:01
  Speaker 2: lost between Heisenberg and Schrodinger. I remember reading that Heisenberg
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: found schrodinger theory called repulsive, you know, and was like
• 24:09
  Speaker 2: offended by what Schrodinger was writing about the importance of
• 24:12
  Speaker 2: visualizability of these ideas exactly.
• 24:16
  Speaker 5: So Heisenberg, in fact, if you excuse the language, so
• 24:20
  Speaker 5: basically Schrodinger's theory was crap and.
• 24:24
  Speaker 2: In the original German somehow he said.
• 24:28
  Speaker 5: Exactly. There was no lot of lost between them, and
• 24:30
  Speaker 5: Heisenberg thought it was almost deeply unscientific to look beyond
• 24:35
  Speaker 5: what the maths was telling you because you couldn't see
• 24:37
  Speaker 5: inside an atom. And Schrodinger was hated matrices, so he
• 24:43
  Speaker 5: just hated this mathematical formalization, and most physicists actually were
• 24:48
  Speaker 5: very uncomfortable with it, so they were quite glad when
• 24:50
  Speaker 5: Schrodinger came along with his waves. But what people could
• 24:53
  Speaker 5: understand is why are these two incredibly different formalizations giving
• 24:58
  Speaker 5: the same answers Who's right? And it turned out that
• 25:01
  Speaker 5: they both were and physicists now will tend to use
• 25:05
  Speaker 5: the matrix approach when a problem is more tractable with matrices,
• 25:12
  Speaker 5: or they'll use waves when the Schrodinger equation, as it's known,
• 25:17
  Speaker 5: gives you better results. So but van Noyman did this
• 25:21
  Speaker 5: theoretical thing, and then he goes on and builds on that.
• 25:25
  Speaker 5: And he builds on that in two ways. One he
• 25:28
  Speaker 5: spins out this entire theory of how the operators, which
• 25:34
  Speaker 5: is like I guess the functions, the stuff that tells
• 25:36
  Speaker 5: you what to do to the maths, like if you
• 25:39
  Speaker 5: want to find the energy, what do you do to
• 25:41
  Speaker 5: the Schrodinger? What do you do to the description of
• 25:43
  Speaker 5: the equation. He looked at the entire maths of this,
• 25:46
  Speaker 5: and this in itself, this operator theory of Ornyman algebras
• 25:51
  Speaker 5: is now really it's at the cutting edge of mathematics again.
• 25:56
  Speaker 5: And then on the other hand, he went and laid
• 25:59
  Speaker 5: out the entire high kind of mathematical groundwork of quantum mechanics,
• 26:05
  Speaker 5: and by doing so he allowed people to ask philosophical
• 26:11
  Speaker 5: more philosophical questions, which again where we're now coming back to,
• 26:16
  Speaker 5: because if you want to build a quantum computer, for example,
• 26:20
  Speaker 5: you want to know, well, will we ever be able
• 26:23
  Speaker 5: to string cubits together? Will we ever be able to
• 26:26
  Speaker 5: kind of entangle these cubits and be able to do
• 26:30
  Speaker 5: real useful calculations with them? And to answer that question
• 26:37
  Speaker 5: you have to go back to what von Neumann showed
• 26:41
  Speaker 5: we could know with the maths. So these in some
• 26:47
  Speaker 5: ways what he was doing at the time was became
• 26:50
  Speaker 5: unfashionable in the sort of sixties, and I think it's
• 26:55
  Speaker 5: all come back now, which is why his name kept
• 26:58
  Speaker 5: coming up in this field.
• 27:00
  Speaker 2: It's sort of amazing the impact that mathematicians have had
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: on physics, just sort of like during their coffee breaks.
• 27:07
  Speaker 2: You know, this is like not something Neuman was targeting.
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: This is not like the central task of his life,
• 27:13
  Speaker 2: and yet he made this enormous contribution. It reminds me
• 27:15
  Speaker 2: of you know, Emmy and Another's theorem. It's just something she
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: was sort of doodled, you know, while she was being
• 27:20
  Speaker 2: distracted by her actual hard math problems, comes in and
• 27:24
  Speaker 2: makes a fundamental impact on the whole shape of modern physics.
• 27:29
  Speaker 2: Is that how we should understand Noyman's impact, That he
• 27:33
  Speaker 2: is such a genius that essentially he can make this
• 27:35
  Speaker 2: impact in a field that's not even his.
• 27:37
  Speaker 5: Own, right, So this is I find absolutely fascinating about
• 27:43
  Speaker 5: von Neumann.
• 27:44
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 27:45
  Speaker 5: So he writes later on this essay called The Mathematician,
• 27:48
  Speaker 5: where he set out his philosophy of mathematics, and he
• 27:53
  Speaker 5: really deeply felt that if mathematicians stray too far from
• 27:57
  Speaker 5: physics and the physical world and they're looking for problems,
• 28:02
  Speaker 5: he says that mathematics becomes baroque. I guess he means
• 28:06
  Speaker 5: it becomes not beautiful, not interesting, too self absorbed. So
• 28:11
  Speaker 5: he was constantly looking around at the world for ways
• 28:16
  Speaker 5: to apply mathematics. And he had this extraordinarily logical mind,
• 28:21
  Speaker 5: and he would kind of set something up in logical
• 28:26
  Speaker 5: terms and formal logical terms and then kind of bulldoze
• 28:29
  Speaker 5: his way through it, and a problem that it seemed
• 28:32
  Speaker 5: completely complicated or intractable would suddenly become simple in his hands.
• 28:37
  Speaker 5: And that was his approach. So from roots in looking
• 28:41
  Speaker 5: at abstruse mathematical logic, which is where he started, he
• 28:44
  Speaker 5: ends up applying kind of logic to almost every area
• 28:49
  Speaker 5: of cutting edge science that you can think of.
• 28:53
  Speaker 2: It is really amazing the impact he's had, and sometimes
• 28:56
  Speaker 2: his impact seems to be so great because of his
• 28:59
  Speaker 2: reputation that's almost closed off areas of research. Something I'm
• 29:04
  Speaker 2: really fascinated by is his impact on the philosophy of
• 29:07
  Speaker 2: quantum mechanics and these hidden variable theorems. He arrived at
• 29:10
  Speaker 2: this big result, this no go theorem, essentially claiming that
• 29:13
  Speaker 2: there could be no hidden variables in quantum mechanics. The
• 29:16
  Speaker 2: quantum mechanics was absolutely random. There was no possibility for
• 29:21
  Speaker 2: the outcome of these experiments to actually be determined by
• 29:24
  Speaker 2: some hidden piece of information. And that shut off basically
• 29:28
  Speaker 2: everybody from exploring that area and for decades until Bell
• 29:31
  Speaker 2: and other folks Hermann for example, discovered that there was
• 29:34
  Speaker 2: actually a flaw in his logic, right, that he had
• 29:37
  Speaker 2: essentially made a mistake. Do you see that result as
• 29:40
  Speaker 2: a sort of an embarrassment or a mistake or what
• 29:43
  Speaker 2: does that tell us about von Neumann?
• 29:45
  Speaker 5: So this is really interesting. So I explored this actually
• 29:48
  Speaker 5: in my chapter on quantum mechanics, and I get reasonably
• 29:52
  Speaker 5: tube into it, And the truth is, there's actually believe
• 29:56
  Speaker 5: it or not. All these years later, there's still debate
• 30:01
  Speaker 5: about what von Noyman meant. So let's unpack it a
• 30:04
  Speaker 5: little bit. Hidden variables theory. So imagine you were a
• 30:09
  Speaker 5: physicist back in I don't know, the nineteenth eighteenth century,
• 30:13
  Speaker 5: and you were interested in the properties of a gas, right,
• 30:16
  Speaker 5: so you might posit as they did, that there are
• 30:20
  Speaker 5: these particles bouncing around inside a box, and when you
• 30:25
  Speaker 5: warm them up, they bounce around even faster, and that
• 30:28
  Speaker 5: gives rise to the properties that you can see, like
• 30:31
  Speaker 5: whatever pressure and things like that you know in the
• 30:34
  Speaker 5: temperature of the gas. And they're hidden because at the
• 30:37
  Speaker 5: time nobody knew that these molecules really existed. Right now,
• 30:43
  Speaker 5: in quantum mechanics, we still haven't found those hidden variables. Ultimately,
• 30:47
  Speaker 5: what we know about quantum mechanics is it's still random.
• 30:49
  Speaker 5: But you're a physicist and I'm sure you'll feel me
• 30:52
  Speaker 5: in but deed down, it's random.
• 30:55
  Speaker 4: Now.
• 30:55
  Speaker 5: What von Noyman actually showed with his theorem wor that
• 31:01
  Speaker 5: if you approached quantum mechanics in the way that he did,
• 31:05
  Speaker 5: and to be fair to him, it is the only
• 31:08
  Speaker 5: self consistent mathematical approach that we know of. In a way,
• 31:15
  Speaker 5: he shows that if you use his maths, if you
• 31:17
  Speaker 5: if it's a Hilbert space, as he called it, even
• 31:20
  Speaker 5: though he'd done all the math. It's a Hilbert space
• 31:22
  Speaker 5: type theory. There's no theory that's a Hilbert space type
• 31:25
  Speaker 5: theory can be a hidden variables theory that explains this
• 31:30
  Speaker 5: kind of randomness and strange you know what, you know,
• 31:34
  Speaker 5: entanglement I hate you know, everybody hates it when I
• 31:38
  Speaker 5: say this, especially physicists. But it's what Einstein referred to
• 31:41
  Speaker 5: as you know, spooky action at a distance and so
• 31:43
  Speaker 5: on that you know, beyond that, you know, you just
• 31:46
  Speaker 5: have to accept that.
• 31:48
  Speaker 2: Let's just remind the listeners what we're talking about here
• 31:50
  Speaker 2: in terms of entanglement. Right, you have some situation where
• 31:54
  Speaker 2: like a photon decays the two particles, and so you
• 31:57
  Speaker 2: know something about the pair of particles. You know, because
• 32:00
  Speaker 2: the photon is spin zero that then the two particles
• 32:02
  Speaker 2: have to preserve that angle momentum. And so if one
• 32:05
  Speaker 2: is spin up, the other one is spinned down. And
• 32:06
  Speaker 2: we've talked on the podcast several times about how even
• 32:10
  Speaker 2: if those particles are now far apart, if one is
• 32:12
  Speaker 2: spin up, the other has to be spinned down, and
• 32:14
  Speaker 2: so measuring one of them tells you about the other one.
• 32:18
  Speaker 2: And the debate was about whether those things are already
• 32:21
  Speaker 2: determined when the particles are created and they're flying apart,
• 32:24
  Speaker 2: and the fact that you don't know whether one is
• 32:26
  Speaker 2: spin up or spin down just reflects your lack of
• 32:28
  Speaker 2: knowledge that it actually is already determined, or if the
• 32:31
  Speaker 2: universe essentially waits, if it's undetermined and it's only fixed
• 32:36
  Speaker 2: when you make the measurement, which is bizarre because if
• 32:39
  Speaker 2: you're then measuring one particle far away from the other one,
• 32:42
  Speaker 2: somehow they're both determined the moment you're measuring one of them.
• 32:46
  Speaker 2: And so von Neuman's claim is to have proven that
• 32:48
  Speaker 2: it's impossible to have any hidden information that actually determines this.
• 32:52
  Speaker 2: But there's an important distinction right between local hidden variables
• 32:55
  Speaker 2: and global hidden variables, right, isn't that the issue between Okay.
• 33:01
  Speaker 5: Well, I'm going to leave that with you, But I
• 33:05
  Speaker 5: think the sticking point is that what was von Nouman
• 33:07
  Speaker 5: trying to show, So people now argue, was he really
• 33:12
  Speaker 5: ruling out all possible theories, all possible invariable theories, or
• 33:16
  Speaker 5: was he just ruling out a subset? And Okay, I'm biased.
• 33:23
  Speaker 5: I go with the historians and the physicists who are arguing,
• 33:28
  Speaker 5: actually he was just ruling out an important subset. But
• 33:32
  Speaker 5: I think you should tell people about the Bells estined
• 33:37
  Speaker 5: that it seems you know so far that you know this,
• 33:42
  Speaker 5: this view has kind of survived quite well in a way.
• 33:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right. The idea that there's local information that
• 33:50
  Speaker 2: moves with the particles is ruled out by Bell's experiment,
• 33:54
  Speaker 2: and so by Nooman was certainly right about that. I
• 33:57
  Speaker 2: think what Bell was astounded by is that his experiment
• 33:59
  Speaker 2: and all Nouman's theories don't rule out global hidden variables,
• 34:02
  Speaker 2: the idea that there could be like some pilot wave
• 34:05
  Speaker 2: controlling the universe. And I agree with you, that's a
• 34:08
  Speaker 2: very strange idea of the universe. On the other hand,
• 34:11
  Speaker 2: it's not ruled out by these experiments, right, it could
• 34:14
  Speaker 2: actually be our universe. What's fascinating to me is the
• 34:18
  Speaker 2: impact one man can have on the field. Whether he
• 34:21
  Speaker 2: intended to rule out global hidden variables or not. That
• 34:24
  Speaker 2: was the understanding. People were like, oh, well, you can't
• 34:27
  Speaker 2: go there. Noman's been there, and you know he doesn't
• 34:30
  Speaker 2: get stuff wrong. So if he shut the door, don't
• 34:32
  Speaker 2: even bother opening it.
• 34:34
  Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, and that was purely based on his
• 34:38
  Speaker 5: reputation for just coming in and solving problems, just solving
• 34:43
  Speaker 5: these intractable problems. So you know, partly it's his fault
• 34:48
  Speaker 5: because he never done worked back and said, well, actually,
• 34:52
  Speaker 5: you know, that's not what I meant, because he's already
• 34:55
  Speaker 5: moved on to something else. But there's a really interesting
• 35:00
  Speaker 5: passage in Boehm, who came up with Bohemian you know,
• 35:03
  Speaker 5: the Bomian sort of wave theory, which is hidden variable's theory,
• 35:07
  Speaker 5: and he says he gave his lecture in front of
• 35:09
  Speaker 5: von Neuman, and von Neuman didn't contradict me. So even
• 35:14
  Speaker 5: Bohm is in awe of von Momen. Yeah, quite right.
• 35:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it tells something about the power of personality. So
• 35:22
  Speaker 2: let's move on to a completely separate topic where von
• 35:25
  Speaker 2: Neuman made a huge impact, and that's two computers. As
• 35:28
  Speaker 2: I think you were saying earlier, every computer we're using,
• 35:31
  Speaker 2: almost every computer ever built, follows a von Neumann architecture.
• 35:36
  Speaker 2: What does that mean? Why is it so influential?
• 35:39
  Speaker 5: All?
• 35:39
  Speaker 3: Right?
• 35:39
  Speaker 5: Well, in short, it was the first description, the first
• 35:43
  Speaker 5: logical description of a modern programmable computer, right, and it
• 35:47
  Speaker 5: came out, I think with his first draft of a
• 35:50
  Speaker 5: report on the DVAC, which I believe was nineteen forty six.
• 35:55
  Speaker 5: So before this there were computers, but there were kind
• 36:00
  Speaker 5: of plugboard type things, and if you wanted them to
• 36:03
  Speaker 5: do something else, then you had to switch around the
• 36:07
  Speaker 5: wires and unplug them. And this was a pretty involved job. Now,
• 36:12
  Speaker 5: our smartphones don't work that way, our laptops don't work
• 36:15
  Speaker 5: that way. They run programs. And what Fulnoyment described was,
• 36:19
  Speaker 5: in broad terms, a machine that would have a very
• 36:23
  Speaker 5: large working memory. It would have a kind of control
• 36:28
  Speaker 5: unit central process, so that would shuttle instructions back and forth,
• 36:34
  Speaker 5: and you know, input and output and so on, and
• 36:37
  Speaker 5: that general architecture, general description of what a computer should
• 36:43
  Speaker 5: look like, despite it having drawbacks. Right, there's something called
• 36:47
  Speaker 5: the von Nooyment bottleneck. So if your computer ever freezes
• 36:51
  Speaker 5: and you know, you see, you know, whatever whatever they
• 36:55
  Speaker 5: have nowadays, if it's a whirling clock face or something
• 37:00
  Speaker 5: like that, then it's got stuck in the full Noyment bottleneck.
• 37:02
  Speaker 5: And that's because instruction. Too many instructions are trying to
• 37:05
  Speaker 5: go in and out between the memory and the central
• 37:08
  Speaker 5: process or at the same time. But we haven't really
• 37:11
  Speaker 5: found a better way to do computing. I mean, people
• 37:16
  Speaker 5: are working on it and sure there's attempts to do
• 37:18
  Speaker 5: parallel computing, and of course deep neural networks don't work
• 37:23
  Speaker 5: that way. But in terms of almost all the computers
• 37:26
  Speaker 5: that we're likely to use, they still work on the
• 37:28
  Speaker 5: ful noiment architecture.
• 37:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's hard to overestimate the influence of this kind
• 37:33
  Speaker 2: of piece of work. And when you're at the very
• 37:35
  Speaker 2: beginning of the field, you can sort of like set
• 37:37
  Speaker 2: the whole direction of the international community by making these
• 37:41
  Speaker 2: choices about like how much memory do you have and
• 37:44
  Speaker 2: how do instructions get moved from memory to the CPU,
• 37:47
  Speaker 2: and the whole idea of having like a central processing
• 37:50
  Speaker 2: unit and memory that seems so basic to us, But
• 37:53
  Speaker 2: it could have gone another way, right, it could have
• 37:54
  Speaker 2: been if we didn't have of Unknoyment or somebody else
• 37:57
  Speaker 2: organized computers, our entire computer are chitecture could be different.
• 38:01
  Speaker 2: It's fascinating to dig into these details that really at
• 38:04
  Speaker 2: the foundation of our entire technological society.
• 38:08
  Speaker 5: Yes, and of course, you know, I try and unpack
• 38:12
  Speaker 5: these things in the book to show that unlike in
• 38:17
  Speaker 5: many biographies of you know, in inverted coom as great men, right,
• 38:21
  Speaker 5: von Neuman was influenced by others, and he influenced others, right,
• 38:26
  Speaker 5: So I do think, and I tried to show that
• 38:28
  Speaker 5: he came out with these nuggets these he was in
• 38:31
  Speaker 5: the right place at the right time. But his ideas
• 38:34
  Speaker 5: were built upon by lesions of people, and he drew
• 38:37
  Speaker 5: also on the ideas of legions of people, and of
• 38:39
  Speaker 5: course that got him into trouble. I mean, when you
• 38:41
  Speaker 5: look at the Vat report, he was working with the
• 38:46
  Speaker 5: group who had invented the Aniac computer. Now, the Aniac
• 38:51
  Speaker 5: you have to get you know, your string of adjective
• 38:53
  Speaker 5: is right when you come to describe these things. Otherwise
• 38:55
  Speaker 5: computer historians get very annoyed with you. But it wasn't
• 39:00
  Speaker 5: strictly programmable, but it was digital, it was electronic. It
• 39:06
  Speaker 5: had lots of things going for it. But it was
• 39:09
  Speaker 5: initially invented to calculate where shells would land during the war,
• 39:15
  Speaker 5: which was a huge problem, and it was also a
• 39:17
  Speaker 5: problem during the First World War. But by the time
• 39:21
  Speaker 5: the NIAC was ready to run, the war was over
• 39:24
  Speaker 5: and so they needed other problems for it to solve,
• 39:27
  Speaker 5: and there had been some talk within the group. So
• 39:31
  Speaker 5: Mockley and Ekert were the designers of the original Eniac
• 39:37
  Speaker 5: and there were some too, well, we really should you
• 39:40
  Speaker 5: have a big memory, and Ekert invented this big new memory,
• 39:44
  Speaker 5: the Mercury delay line. And but what von Neuman did was,
• 39:49
  Speaker 5: using this incredible logical mind that he had, was coalesced
• 39:53
  Speaker 5: these ideas into a single document and then without his
• 39:56
  Speaker 5: permission or the permission of the team, of course, this
• 39:59
  Speaker 5: was circulated widely across the world to every group, practically
• 40:05
  Speaker 5: every group in the world that was working on a
• 40:07
  Speaker 5: kind of Nassin computer. And that was Goldstein who was
• 40:13
  Speaker 5: involved in the any App project. And then there's this
• 40:16
  Speaker 5: acrimonious falling out. But then Van Norman moves and he
• 40:21
  Speaker 5: sets up his own computing project at the Institute for
• 40:24
  Speaker 5: Advanced Study, and he puts all of the patterns in
• 40:27
  Speaker 5: the public domain. But even more importantly, when they're building
• 40:31
  Speaker 5: this computer, which is it's one of the first program computers,
• 40:34
  Speaker 5: but it's not the first, he sends every single report,
• 40:39
  Speaker 5: every progress report along the way is published. And this
• 40:44
  Speaker 5: in fact proves to have an even bigger impact on
• 40:49
  Speaker 5: computing than the EDVAC report where he describes this architecture.
• 40:53
  Speaker 5: So it's kind of a true ProMED attack. And I
• 40:56
  Speaker 5: say in the book that. Wow, I asked, more or
• 40:59
  Speaker 5: less ask the question. It makes I think it makes
• 41:01
  Speaker 5: him the godfather of open source computing as well, in
• 41:05
  Speaker 5: a way becaus had Mocklely and Eckert succeeded in patenting
• 41:13
  Speaker 5: the computer. It might be it might be a different world.
• 41:15
  Speaker 5: Progress might be slower. Who knows.
• 41:17
  Speaker 2: Who knows, because Van Norman is not just like a
• 41:20
  Speaker 2: smart guy in some rooms scriveling with equations. He's a
• 41:24
  Speaker 2: very clever man, right in terms of strategy, as you
• 41:27
  Speaker 2: were saying, essentially invented game theory, starting from like analyzing
• 41:31
  Speaker 2: how living room board games go all the way up
• 41:34
  Speaker 2: to thinking about nuclear strategy. Tell us about the impact
• 41:37
  Speaker 2: he made on game theory.
• 41:39
  Speaker 5: Yeah, so some people see game theory as the product
• 41:43
  Speaker 5: of a of a fairly cynical mind, and so he's
• 41:48
  Speaker 5: had to bad press for that. But the more I
• 41:51
  Speaker 5: kind of dug into his personality, the more I felt
• 41:55
  Speaker 5: that that was a bit simple minded in a way,
• 41:57
  Speaker 5: it was. It was a very complex person. So you
• 42:01
  Speaker 5: have to bear in mind that he's Jewish, and he
• 42:03
  Speaker 5: starts his life in a very wealthy, privileged Jewish family.
• 42:09
  Speaker 5: Is dad's a banker. He's kind of used to living
• 42:12
  Speaker 5: the good life. And I get the feeling that from
• 42:16
  Speaker 5: his youth. Really he thinks more or less the best
• 42:22
  Speaker 5: of people. He doesn't really understand people. He has a
• 42:24
  Speaker 5: fairly you know, he's a mathematician, and he's extremely an
• 42:31
  Speaker 5: extremely able mathematician, but I don't think he was completely
• 42:36
  Speaker 5: ofa with how other people thought or felt.
• 42:40
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 42:41
  Speaker 5: But then what happens is there are two things. One
• 42:44
  Speaker 5: is that in his native Hungary, in Budapest, a communist
• 42:49
  Speaker 5: government installs itself after the First World War, and it's
• 42:55
  Speaker 5: pretty brutal. But then they get overthrown by a kind
• 42:59
  Speaker 5: of reactionary, sort of right wing government, and that that's
• 43:04
  Speaker 5: even more bruce. Although in there are hangings in the street.
• 43:08
  Speaker 5: It's just awful. And his message from this is like,
• 43:13
  Speaker 5: I don't like totalitarianism at all. So he's he already
• 43:18
  Speaker 5: begins to come out against that. And then by nineteen
• 43:22
  Speaker 5: thirty he's already seeing something terrible is happening in Germany.
• 43:25
  Speaker 5: He just censors it and in his letters start to
• 43:27
  Speaker 5: get filled with premonitions of disaster, of a second World War.
• 43:32
  Speaker 5: He thinks some you know, Germany, which he kind of
• 43:35
  Speaker 5: sees as the center of the intellectual universe. Really he
• 43:39
  Speaker 5: sees it beginning to go strive with anti Semitism, and
• 43:43
  Speaker 5: so Princeton offers him a job in nineteen thirty and
• 43:47
  Speaker 5: he's gone right, and he sees what's happening from Afar,
• 43:53
  Speaker 5: and he hates the Nazis. He hates the Nazis, he
• 43:57
  Speaker 5: hates Communism. He really really spises what's happening there. And
• 44:03
  Speaker 5: he loses as a result of the Nazis. You know,
• 44:05
  Speaker 5: this this great country that he saw, Germany, he sees,
• 44:08
  Speaker 5: you know, the people getting behind Hitler or many of them,
• 44:14
  Speaker 5: and he loses. He completely loses in someways his faith
• 44:18
  Speaker 5: in human nature. So game theory is kind of the
• 44:24
  Speaker 5: product of somebody who's trying to understand human nature and
• 44:27
  Speaker 5: trying also to apply his logical mind to it, but
• 44:32
  Speaker 5: almost in a kind of I can't really go know
• 44:35
  Speaker 5: what's going on inside you, So I'm just going to
• 44:39
  Speaker 5: try and do my best with what I've got, which
• 44:41
  Speaker 5: is how you behave And the way that you've behaved
• 44:44
  Speaker 5: recently is not that great, so you know, And famously
• 44:51
  Speaker 5: his first wife divorces him, Marriott, she's also from a
• 44:55
  Speaker 5: fairly wealthy Jewish background, and then she goes on to
• 44:58
  Speaker 5: kind of great things herself. She becomes this amazing science
• 45:03
  Speaker 5: administrator who sets up brooke Haven Lab. I think. She
• 45:07
  Speaker 5: leaves him because he spends too much time thinking. She
• 45:11
  Speaker 5: runs off for the post talk I think, and ends
• 45:14
  Speaker 5: up getting married. So but their agreement for their daughter
• 45:21
  Speaker 5: is still with us today, thankfully. Marina is that for
• 45:27
  Speaker 5: the first fourteen I think years, she will spend most
• 45:31
  Speaker 5: of her time with her mum, and then only spend
• 45:35
  Speaker 5: the holidays with her dad, and then at fourteen, when
• 45:40
  Speaker 5: she kind of reaches the age of maturity. From fourteen onwards,
• 45:44
  Speaker 5: she'll stay with her dad most of the time and
• 45:47
  Speaker 5: visit her mom and her stepdad shuring the holidays. Now,
• 45:50
  Speaker 5: vol Nouman remarries pretty quickly to another Hungarian Jewish lady,
• 45:56
  Speaker 5: Clara Dan, who ends up becoming the first modern computer programmer. Book.
• 46:02
  Speaker 5: But it's kind of quite a tense household, as Marina says,
• 46:06
  Speaker 5: it's it was quite naive of these two people to
• 46:10
  Speaker 5: imagine that the teenage years are the age of rationality
• 46:14
  Speaker 5: and reason, but that's what ended up happening, and so
• 46:20
  Speaker 5: kind of game theories formulated to try and make some
• 46:23
  Speaker 5: some sense, because you have to remember that before for Neumann,
• 46:28
  Speaker 5: you know this, this was just considered impossible. And now
• 46:32
  Speaker 5: game theory has become more complex and has tried to
• 46:36
  Speaker 5: take into account real human behavior, right, but until for
• 46:41
  Speaker 5: Neuman's early proofs, there was nobody had made any inroads
• 46:46
  Speaker 5: on this at all.
• 46:47
  Speaker 2: I think it's really impressive when people tackle a completely
• 46:50
  Speaker 2: new field and try to bring it to heal mathematically
• 46:53
  Speaker 2: something which seems maybe impossible to describe our ability any
• 46:57
  Speaker 2: success to you know, describe the physical universe in all
• 47:00
  Speaker 2: of its incredible complexity, using simple mathematical laws. I'm in
• 47:04
  Speaker 2: awe of it when somebody can take the first stab,
• 47:06
  Speaker 2: you know, that's like that's really doing science. And so
• 47:10
  Speaker 2: in your book and some of the opening passages, you
• 47:12
  Speaker 2: make this comment that many people think that von Neumann
• 47:16
  Speaker 2: is smarter than Einstein, smarter than godel I actually pulled
• 47:20
  Speaker 2: some of my listeners and I asked them, said, who
• 47:22
  Speaker 2: do you think is the most influential scientists of all time?
• 47:25
  Speaker 2: And you know, the results are basically what you would expect.
• 47:27
  Speaker 2: Einstein gets a lot of mentions, Newton got Leo Darwin,
• 47:30
  Speaker 2: somebody said Aristotle, somebody commented Bill kni a science guy.
• 47:34
  Speaker 2: You know, Noimen wasn't up there. What do you think
• 47:40
  Speaker 2: about this comparison? What's your argument that Norman was essentially
• 47:43
  Speaker 2: one of the smartest people ever, one of the most
• 47:45
  Speaker 2: influential scientists, And why do you think he hasn't penetrated
• 47:48
  Speaker 2: to the wider public consciousness?
• 47:50
  Speaker 5: So some people just get better pressed, right, I mean,
• 47:55
  Speaker 5: Einstein had gray hair, think later in his life, and
• 47:58
  Speaker 5: so people tend to forgive him various interesting parts of
• 48:04
  Speaker 5: his personal life and so on. And you know, nobody
• 48:09
  Speaker 5: remembers Paul Poincare, who had come up with quite a
• 48:12
  Speaker 5: lot of the special theory of relativity before before Einstein,
• 48:16
  Speaker 5: and you know, lots of names care forgotten and Gaus.
• 48:20
  Speaker 5: You know, how could you not how could you not
• 48:22
  Speaker 5: watching gas Yeah, exactly exactly, And I think I think
• 48:26
  Speaker 5: part of the reason is, I think in the public
• 48:29
  Speaker 5: mind there's this view of the great genius, right, they're
• 48:33
  Speaker 5: working alone, they're usually a theorist, and Einstein just fits
• 48:39
  Speaker 5: into this category brilliantly, doesn't he. And you can name
• 48:42
  Speaker 5: what Einstein did, it's relativity, you know, And if if
• 48:45
  Speaker 5: you're lucky, you remember a couple of years equals mc squared.
• 48:48
  Speaker 5: I wanted von Neuman do Okay, if you get somewhere,
• 48:52
  Speaker 5: you go, oh, he had something to do with the
• 48:54
  Speaker 5: programmable computer. But the story is complicated. But he did
• 48:57
  Speaker 5: all of these other things, and I think stringing those
• 49:01
  Speaker 5: together and making sense of them is a difficult task.
• 49:04
  Speaker 5: And I promise you I spent two half years on this.
• 49:07
  Speaker 5: It wasn't easier. Mathematicians have told me told me this
• 49:10
  Speaker 5: as well, So so it's a complicated story and making
• 49:15
  Speaker 5: some sense of that is hard. And then I think
• 49:20
  Speaker 5: von Neumann more than more than many. You have to
• 49:23
  Speaker 5: tell the whole story. You have to show his influence,
• 49:26
  Speaker 5: you have to follow it down to the present day,
• 49:28
  Speaker 5: because for many years, in fact, what you got was
• 49:33
  Speaker 5: von Neuman's, you know, stories of kind of arithmetical brilliance.
• 49:38
  Speaker 5: So he'd turn up at some party and somebody would
• 49:40
  Speaker 5: ask him, you know, some crazy puzzle and he'd solve
• 49:44
  Speaker 5: it just like that. But that doesn't really tell you
• 49:49
  Speaker 5: the deep stuff that he did, the fact that he
• 49:52
  Speaker 5: was so ahead on so many things, from the computer
• 49:56
  Speaker 5: to game theory, all of which really has aped modern life.
• 50:02
  Speaker 5: So you know, we were just talking about game theory,
• 50:04
  Speaker 5: and it's a little known fact that Google, Amazon, all
• 50:08
  Speaker 5: of these companies their algorithms. You know, what gives them
• 50:13
  Speaker 5: eighty percent of their profits is advertising, often and the
• 50:18
  Speaker 5: algorithms that run their advertising platforms a game theoretical, right,
• 50:23
  Speaker 5: So Vonnoima is responsible for that eighty percent, and then
• 50:26
  Speaker 5: the other twenty percent comes from computing. That's the other
• 50:30
  Speaker 5: as is responsible for that other twenty percent two. But
• 50:33
  Speaker 5: to get there to truly appreciate that, you know, it's
• 50:36
  Speaker 5: a it's a tough story, I think, and it's a
• 50:39
  Speaker 5: tough sell. You can't just go, ah, yeah, it was
• 50:41
  Speaker 5: this and this and it's how science works. But I
• 50:46
  Speaker 5: don't think many people even now are ready to appreciate
• 50:52
  Speaker 5: how science really works. And to appreciate Vonnoima properly, I
• 50:56
  Speaker 5: think I think you need to kind of acknowledge that, yes,
• 50:59
  Speaker 5: he was, as I say, one of the smartest people.
• 51:02
  Speaker 5: Maybe you know, Einstein was in some ways a deeper thinker,
• 51:07
  Speaker 5: and you know, he had a degree of scientific imagination,
• 51:11
  Speaker 5: which I think von Norman envied. But then that wasn't
• 51:14
  Speaker 5: what von Noyman was about. Von Norman was about distilling,
• 51:17
  Speaker 5: almost like magic, the essential logic of particular things. And
• 51:23
  Speaker 5: that's also a gift, and you know he was a
• 51:26
  Speaker 5: mathematician and not a theoretical physicist.
• 51:28
  Speaker 4: So yeah, well.
• 51:42
  Speaker 2: What do you think is the value in this sort
• 51:45
  Speaker 2: of like ranking the greatest genius in history? Is it
• 51:48
  Speaker 2: sort of the way we talk about, you know, who
• 51:50
  Speaker 2: was the best footballer ever? Was it Jordan or Lebron?
• 51:53
  Speaker 2: The best basketball player ever? Is it just like a
• 51:55
  Speaker 2: fun conversation or do you think there's like real historical
• 51:58
  Speaker 2: or intellectual value in like trying to put these people
• 52:02
  Speaker 2: on a spectrum?
• 52:03
  Speaker 5: Yeah, I'm not a fan of it. I'm not a
• 52:05
  Speaker 5: fan of it, but you want to draw people into
• 52:10
  Speaker 5: absolutely fascinating stories. And the way that I approach this
• 52:14
  Speaker 5: story is more is almost a technological history of the
• 52:18
  Speaker 5: twentieth twenty first century, right, So von Noyman is to
• 52:22
  Speaker 5: me the essential thread that runs through everything from the
• 52:24
  Speaker 5: atom bomb to game theory to his proof that machines
• 52:31
  Speaker 5: can reproduce, which I fear we may yet think of
• 52:36
  Speaker 5: as his most important work yet. So I think if
• 52:42
  Speaker 5: we you know, you start ranking, it's a fun parlor game,
• 52:47
  Speaker 5: but with the best of it, you start to probe, well,
• 52:50
  Speaker 5: what do we actually mean by that? And you know
• 52:54
  Speaker 5: who uses relativity day to day. We all use computers, right,
• 52:57
  Speaker 5: I know, relativity is yes, everybody's to jump down my
• 53:01
  Speaker 5: throat and say GPS blah blah blah setting satellites up. Yes, yes, yes,
• 53:06
  Speaker 5: but you know the stuff that affects us from the
• 53:10
  Speaker 5: economy to the way even though we think about optimizing
• 53:15
  Speaker 5: our lives as if it's some game theory algorithm, you know,
• 53:19
  Speaker 5: as if we're maximizing utility, right, that's the way. Certainly
• 53:24
  Speaker 5: many people in Silicon Valley tend to think about these things. Well,
• 53:27
  Speaker 5: hang on, what are the mathematical assumptions I underlie this
• 53:30
  Speaker 5: how we ended up here of all places?
• 53:34
  Speaker 1: Right?
• 53:34
  Speaker 5: And so if we start to have those discussions, then great,
• 53:40
  Speaker 5: rank away. But you know, if it's otherwise, it's just
• 53:44
  Speaker 5: like a rather sterile debate, isn't it.
• 53:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, I think the real value is in just
• 53:48
  Speaker 2: understanding the impact that one person can have on the world,
• 53:51
  Speaker 2: and that just with your mind, just thinking, just solving
• 53:54
  Speaker 2: puzzles and being curious, you can change the whole future
• 53:58
  Speaker 2: history of the human race. Incredible. I hope that inspires
• 54:02
  Speaker 2: young people out there, you know that who is the
• 54:04
  Speaker 2: next von Neuman? It makes me wonder Well, thanks very
• 54:07
  Speaker 2: much for joining us on the podcast today. It Brooke
• 54:09
  Speaker 2: was really fun. I learned a lot about physics and
• 54:12
  Speaker 2: technology and history. Tell everyone where they can find it.
• 54:16
  Speaker 5: Yeah, it is available in all good bookshops and online.
• 54:21
  Speaker 5: It's called A Man for the Future.
• 54:22
  Speaker 2: All right, thanks very much for joining us today.
• 54:24
  Speaker 5: Thank you very much, Saniel.
• 54:26
  Speaker 3: All Right, Well, he makes a pretty good case for
• 54:28
  Speaker 3: von Neuman.
• 54:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah. One thing about von Neuman is that people who
• 54:32
  Speaker 2: knew him tended to consider him the smartest person they
• 54:35
  Speaker 2: ever met. Even people who like New Einstein and New
• 54:38
  Speaker 2: Girdle and New Nuther and stuff like that. There's something
• 54:42
  Speaker 2: about this guy that, just like Reedy, it's smartness when
• 54:45
  Speaker 2: you talk to him, and that should count. I don't
• 54:49
  Speaker 2: know if that should count, but it's one reason why
• 54:52
  Speaker 2: he's so well respected among academics that I have met him,
• 54:56
  Speaker 2: who have met him, Yeah, exactly. And the lore of
• 54:58
  Speaker 2: von Neuman has also probably it through the field. I mean,
• 55:01
  Speaker 2: in the interview we talked about that one time he
• 55:03
  Speaker 2: made a claim about quantum mechanics which was technically incorrect
• 55:06
  Speaker 2: and shut down a whole area of research for decades
• 55:09
  Speaker 2: and decades because everybody was like, well, von Neuman figured
• 55:12
  Speaker 2: that out, So I'm sure he was right even though
• 55:14
  Speaker 2: he was actually wrong in that case.
• 55:16
  Speaker 3: And so what he was wrong, Yeah, that doesn't sound
• 55:19
  Speaker 3: like positive influence.
• 55:21
  Speaker 2: Well, Anania makes the case that he wasn't wrong, he
• 55:23
  Speaker 2: was just misunderstood. He was proving something else. So this
• 55:27
  Speaker 2: is a long debate in philosophy ex science about what
• 55:30
  Speaker 2: exactly von Norman was proving and whether people misunderstood him
• 55:33
  Speaker 2: or whether he made a mistake or whatever.
• 55:36
  Speaker 1: And remind me how many Nobel prizes did he win?
• 55:40
  Speaker 2: Zero?
• 55:42
  Speaker 3: Zero? That's too less than my guy.
• 55:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right. And now that he's dead, he can't
• 55:47
  Speaker 2: ever win any Nobel prizes, so he'll never catch up
• 55:50
  Speaker 2: to your dude.
• 55:51
  Speaker 3: Yep, yep.
• 55:52
  Speaker 2: But that's only because he died young. He died in
• 55:54
  Speaker 2: nineteen fifty seven, so he didn't really have a chance
• 55:56
  Speaker 2: because you know, you can't win the Nobel Prize posthumously.
• 55:59
  Speaker 2: So he had this huge impacts on science, and then
• 56:01
  Speaker 2: he died, the Nobel Prize didn't really have a chance
• 56:03
  Speaker 2: to give him any of these prizes.
• 56:06
  Speaker 1: Well, I guess that's one thing you should add to
• 56:08
  Speaker 1: your agenda is stay alive as long as possible to
• 56:11
  Speaker 1: increase your chances of being the greatest of all time.
• 56:14
  Speaker 2: Step one, figure out something awesome. Step two, stay alive
• 56:17
  Speaker 2: to collect prizes. I'm still working on step one.
• 56:19
  Speaker 3: Well no, now you have to figure out three amazing
• 56:22
  Speaker 3: things to be my guy.
• 56:24
  Speaker 2: True.
• 56:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, Well, an interesting discussion about influence and science,
• 56:31
  Speaker 1: about big ideas and how sometimes that influence can be
• 56:35
  Speaker 1: positive or negative.
• 56:36
  Speaker 2: Either way, everybody who's thinking about the universe is having
• 56:39
  Speaker 2: an impact on the human experience. So go out there,
• 56:42
  Speaker 2: keep thinking, asking questions, and pushing forward the forefront of
• 56:45
  Speaker 2: human knowledge.
• 56:46
  Speaker 3: And let the universe influence you.
• 56:48
  Speaker 2: Even if you'll never be number one on his list.
• 56:51
  Speaker 1: You can be number two, Daniel. You can be the
• 56:53
  Speaker 1: number two Daniel Watson I've ever met.
• 56:55
  Speaker 2: I don't want your pity. No thanks, I'm gonna earn it.
• 56:58
  Speaker 4: Man.
• 56:58
  Speaker 3: Wait, no, it's a great What are you talking about?
• 57:02
  Speaker 2: Number two of two?
• 57:03
  Speaker 3: Wow, it's better than being zero of two.
• 57:09
  Speaker 2: Now zero is the first place, man, I count from zero.
• 57:11
  Speaker 2: I'm a computer scientist.
• 57:13
  Speaker 3: I thought you were a physicist. I don't think you
• 57:17
  Speaker 3: have a degree in computer science.
• 57:18
  Speaker 2: Then I have a Bachelor of Science and computer science.
• 57:21
  Speaker 2: Oh all right, all.
• 57:21
  Speaker 1: Right, all right, so yeah, all right, you're accredited. But anyways,
• 57:27
  Speaker 1: we hope you enjoyed that. Thanks for joining us, See
• 57:30
  Speaker 1: you next time.
• 57:35
  Speaker 2: For more science and curiosity, come find us on social media,
• 57:39
  Speaker 2: where we answer questions and post videos. We're on Twitter, Discord, Instant,
• 57:43
  Speaker 2: and now TikTok. Thanks for listening, and remember that Daniel
• 57:47
  Speaker 2: and Jorge Explain the Universe is a production of iHeartRadio.
• 57:51
  Speaker 2: For more podcasts from iHeart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
• 57:55
  Speaker 2: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.