Comment by gradus_ad
5 hours ago
Genuinely curious, because I know von Neumann was an intellectual giant, but what was his most original/groundbreaking contribution? My impression of his work has always been that he would survey a field, find some particular problem that needed attending to, tidily solve it, then move on to some other domain. But I guess there's a latent assumption there that he didn't do anything huge or groundbreaking.
Battacharya's The Man From the Future is an entertaining read (on JvN's life and achievements)
I'm reading this now, and can confirm it's very entertaining, and gave me more perspective on his life and achievements (coming from a CS background).
"Most" involves great subjectivity, but how about laying the mathematical foundations for quantum mechanics?