Turing and von Neumann - Professor Raymond Flood

An overview of the major contributions of two of the founders of computer science - John von Neumann and Alan Turing www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and...
Alan Turing (1912-1954) and John von Neumann (1903-1957) had an enormous range of interests not only in pure mathematics but also in practical applications. They made major contributions during the Second World War; Turing on cryptography and von Neumann on weapons development. The Turing machine formalised the idea of an algorithm and the Turing test is important in artificial intelligence while von Neumann founded the subject of game theory. Both are considered founders of computer science.
The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and...
Gresham College has offered free public lectures for over 400 years, thanks to the generosity of our supporters. There are currently over 2,500 lectures free to access. We believe that everyone should have the opportunity to learn from some of the greatest minds. To support Gresham's mission, please consider making a donation: gresham.ac.uk/support/

[@DC-zi6se]

John von Neumann was like the "ideal" man, he was humble, soft spoken and kind, also, he had an incredibly brilliant mind. He is one of the few true intellectual giants who were actually nice people.

[@Chaloonoupada]

Von Neumann's politics was horrible though. He wanted to nuke communist Russia and kill millions of people. Not so nice, really.

[@maxwest6595]

Jacob Bronowski said he was a bit of an intellectual aristocrat who believed lay-people shouldnt concern themselves with lofty subjects.

[@kreek22]

@@Chaloonoupada He was a realist, a fact which causes the weak witted and small-souled to suffer psychological trauma. Von Neumann knew the greatest work of strategy ever written virtually by heart. In 1945, before it was feasible to nuke the Soviets with more than a few small yield weapons, he already advised invasion and government replacement. This is what Thucydides, too, would have advised. He was right, of course.

[@kreek22]

@Maiahi It is from an anecdote about von Neumann related in this book: Von Neumann, Morgenstern, and the Creation of Game Theory: From Chess to Social Science, 1900-1960 In 1945, von Neumann said: "... we are creating ... a monster whose influence is going to change history ... this is only the beginning! The energy source which is now being made available will make scientists the most hated and most wanted citizens in any country. The world could be conquered, but this nation of puritans will not grab its chance; we will be able to go into space way beyond the moon if only people could keep pace with what they create ..."

[@C_R_O_M________]

But a horrendous driver. No manhood there…

[@leonardo03231315]

How do we not have a movie / documentary on Neumann already?

[@zoltanhuvelyes6208]

Just leaving a dot, if anyone would find such a thing.

[@lestorbeeny8454]

@@zoltanhuvelyes6208 there actually is one of Von Neumann from the sixties. brilliant video! Respond if you want me to find it for you

[@zoltanhuvelyes6208]

@@lestorbeeny8454 if you'd be so kind

[@edgeeffect]

I love that introductory slide... I don't know how carefully Professor Flood chose those two portraits (in fact it just looks like the "standard" pic of JvN)... but JUST LOOK at the way Turing is looking at von Neumann.

[@tensevo]

Turing and Von Neumann, both instrumental in defining the modern computer, hardware and software, were taken from us too early, in their prime. Let us be sure to look after our talent much better in future.

[@and_I_am_Life_the_fixer_of_all]

Hey Mark Freeman, how are you? I'm looking for internship jobs, could help me in any way?

[@GordonBrevity]

​@@and_I_am_Life_the_fixer_of_all😂😂

[@alfonsoantonromero932]

Great conference joining two parallel lives that seem more typical of Schrondinger's world. Everything is extraordinary about John von Neumann from his childhood in the self-demanding Jewish upper class of Budapest until his death. The Hungarian Martians represented an extraordinary concentration of scientists. A Faust greater than the literary one. With his intellectual and mathematical Neumann ego he managed to excel in almost all branches of science, thanks to his mathematical basis.

[@akshayshrivastava97]

4:00 I fell off my chair 🤣, perhaps one of the most apt examples of what Von Neumann was capable of.

[@Dont_Gnaw_on_the_Kitty]

I remember my programming classes were the instructor emphasised any loop we programmed must have only 1 entry point and 1 exit point. A Turing machine!

[@Nautilus1972]

He wasn't a programmer then ....

[@jesusbermudez6775]

What I remember is saying to myself that I would never write an infinite loop. After a few days I had written and infinite number of infinite loops.

[@jenko701]

All mr Floods lectures are just great.

[@tensevo]

It is hard not to weep when contemplating how profound Turing's contribution to human progress and thought was.

[@plekkchand]

I hope you mean that his persecution was saddening, not his contribution.

[@tensevo]

@@plekkchand I mean his work, but surely it is sad how he was treated.

[@cygil1]

@@plekkchand Turing would be cancelled today, just for other acts.

@@cygil1 No Schrodinger would be drawing all the lightning.

[@GordonBrevity]

It's hard not to laugh when reading comments like that.

[@ticotechhouston4917]

Alan Turing - betrayed by the country he saved

[@greensombrero3641]

Excellent presentation and thank you. Can you please recommend biographies of both subjects? Would appreciate your direction on it.

[@AlanShore4god]

Turing's Cathedral is a pretty good read about both of them (and others)

[@taylorism7787]

Norman Macrae has a fascinating biography of von Neumann.

[@kreek22]

Stanislaw Ulam wrote a very short bio of his friend, von Neumann, right after his demise.

[@greensombrero3641]

@@taylorism7787 just finished this Macrae book, outstanding

[@greensombrero3641]

@@kreek22 thank you! will check it out

[@eulerthegreatestofall147]

Von Neumann was a genius without a doubt, the question is: was he born like that? or just did the hungarian education system turn him into a genius at relative early age?. He contributed to many different fields of interest, in both practical and theoretical ways. His memory was astonished, he also liked going out to bars etc during his bachelor years, he really also liked enjoying social life. He was a very likable guy.

[@lvgaben]

Both, because the Hungarian education it was one of the best in the world in the late 19th early 20th century next to Germany. Just think about the other top Hungarian scientist like Edward Teller, and Leo Szilard, John G. Kemeny (developing the BASIC programming language), George de Hevesy, Theodore von Kármán, Eugene Wigner, and so many other famous Hungarian scientist, inventor, businessman ... But I think Neumann brain was somehow different as normal people... His brain could store a lot more information, He remembered it, and He was quick....

[@eulerthegreatestofall147]

@@lvgaben You're 100% correct. However, I do think Von Neumann was the greatest among them. Since, he was not only prodigy child who can memorize an entire book, etc but also he was extremely smart, a genius!!!

[@lvgaben]

@@eulerthegreatestofall147 Yes He used a lot more percentage from his brain capacity then any other human. Honestly im sure there are more same or similar genius in the world, but they are lost because they born in poor country, poor or uneducated or unhealty family, or for so many other reason.

[@richardkovacs2006]

Neumann was born with immense skills, but without wonderful parents and great teachers, who help these types of kids to direct their skills in the right direction, they could be lost. I know many amazingly talented kids around me in today's Hungary, esp in maths, but without a teacher like Laszlo Ratz we may never hear of them as adults. I know a very bright kid, who - because of problems at home and because the school couldn't tie down his mind - was outcasted by the teachers (!) because it takes an effort to fulfill his curiosity. Sadly his parents aren't fit for the job either. I wouldn"t be surprised if his huge talents will turn him into a masterful criminal... simply because his family and school failed him, but the talent is there and has to find a target.

[@user-hu3iy9gz5j]

Education is not magic

[@benswitzer4679]

What a great lecture!

[@B3LLEND]

Agreed. Interesting, entertaining and great delivery. Enjoyed watching.

[@sherlockholmeslives.1605]

I am glad that John von Neumann was more intelligent than me.

[@pratik_shrestha]

@Mike Fuller lol

[@donaldwhittaker7987]

Outstanding

[@TheDavidlloydjones]

The slide at 25:00 states incorrectly that the tape in a Turing machine moves right or left. This is obviously impossible since the tape is infinite in both directions, and Turing knew the idea would strike anyone as silly. It is the notional machine that moves.

[@cygil1]

Correct. It's Post's machine that scans left or right. Most of the the theory of "Turing machines" was actually provided by Post, not Turing, who has been Orwelled out of the history, along with Zuse, Babbage, Church and other figures more significant than Turing.

[@margarita8442]

he did the ALU memory , cpu design

[@dougg1075]

Turing.. what a tragedy

[@boxerpop82]

The fly is huge! hahaha classic geometric series

[@gmonkman]

thank you, that was really good. Kinda wish you'd gone to town on the outrageous behaviour of the uk establishment's treatment of Turing, they should now face some sort of prosecution ... and I feel sick and sorry, but I couldnt have typed this without him.

[@nicktrice4921]

@me hee It was a transaction willingly entered into by two consenting adults. People have the right to think whatever they want about such things, but they don't have the right to punish either party in a consensual agreement that does not hurt any third parties. Thanks to that very attitude evinced by your comment, the petty, busy-body, sanctimoniously self-righteous "morality" of the bourgeois politics of Turing's day led directly to the death of a loyal servant of England, who was a friggin genius and had contributed directly to Britain's survival and victory in World War II. THAT'S what's truly repugnant! Think of all the further contributions Turing could've made to humanity, if the so-called 'moral majority' of his day hadn't persecuted, ostracized, and unethically experimented upon him! Unfortunately those same backward views are still widespread to this day. For the life of me, I don't get why so many people seem to care so very much about what consenting, private citizens do in their bedrooms, or with their wallets.

[@martinzitter4725]

"...both of them..." [sic]

[@davidwilkie9551]

The Enigma Machine is an emulation, at human scale, of line-of-sight observation of the resonant unity, ONE-INFINITY Totality and transverse trancendental sync-duration positioning integration, sum-of-all-histories frequency density-intensity alignment amplitudes, AM-FM Communication. ("You just look at it", and see the Universal Turing Mechanism of prime-cofactor wave-packaging holography, pure-math relative-timing ratio-rates Perspective Circuitry)

[@theklaus7436]

I often wonder how it would be to be a child protegí . But I wasn’t so I hear about all these people who were. Very interesting but I struggle to understand some of it. But then I try again and again and this helps . Thank you for all of these shows. The story goes that turings tragic death due to an able is why iPhones have a able with a bite! Jobs did never confirm that but why not

[@psibarpsi]

No that's not the reason why Apple's logo has that bitten-off apple. I mean, I would've loved it had it been the case, but it just isn't true.

[@user-pm8nj3mb6q]

Does this give Konrad Zuse his due?

[@janchovanec8624]

Am I the only person that didn't get almost half of what was presented?

[@tarnopol]

Yes.

[@wassilywsky6333]

Yes you're the only one, it seems

[@sistagalsistagal8136]

They, the English, did to Turring what they did to Churchill, sacked and sent them to their graves early. No matter what they thought their problems were back then, nothing justifies what they did to both incredibly and gifted geniuses 💚. The world was not deserving of either!

[@freebornjohn2687]

What did "they" do to Churchill and who were the "they"?

[@GH-oi2jf]

A process is an algorithm only if it halts. You can put your Turing machine into an infinite loop, in which case it is not an implementation of an algorithm.

[@xxlabratxx01]

You could define it as such but why can't you have an algorithm that produces successively more accurate approximations to some value (real) or say erothotsthenes drive for primes? Is it only an algorithm if it's to find primes under a certain number?

[@kxkxkxkx]

Wrong😂

[@TheDavidlloydjones]

Audio engineers who cannot put a decent recording of sound on the Internet should be fired. Gresham would do all of us -- and themselves -- a service if they would take down this excellent lecture, remove the echo from the sound-track, and re-post it.

[@henryj.8528]

Prestigious universities with distinguished speakers on interesting topics and they don't seem to know how to focus a camera, light the speaker or record the audio. Happens all the time--mostly universities. I'd like to have heard this lecture but it's too painful. They could have EQ'd some of that out...

[@jakelabete7412]

Fired? Off with their heads, or at least their ears.

[@kxkxkxkx]

Why don't you do it instead of just whining like a woman?

[@hewasfuzzywuzzy3583]

Microphone feedback! Arrrgh Make up your minds "sound engineers" on which microphones are necessary. Constant reverberation is excruciating on the eardrums and the head. Aside from all that mess this was kinda entertaining.

[@henryj.8528]

Prestigious university with mega brains and they can't figure out how to record audio.

[@hewasfuzzywuzzy3583]

@@henryj.8528 Yep. Go figure. LOL

[@janklaas6885]

📍28:58

[@danielhaslam8269]

They both knew too much and had t be taken care of. Sad days when you're a genius. Give then die.

[@tr7b410]

Tesla-Ramanajan & Von Neuman had over 200 I.Q.s....just a number, but they had brilliant minds.

[@dylangabriel2703]

Idk about Tesla

[@icantfindausernamehe]

The problem with mathematicians is they can't do maths.

[@TheDavidlloydjones]

There's a stupid mistake in Flood's version of things here: Turing's Turing machine has an infinite tape and the head moves. Flood somehow moves the tape, which is silly since you can't move anything infinite. This is a damn shame, since the lecture is, like all of Flood's stuff, pretty soumd the rest of the time.

[@GH-oi2jf]

David Lloyd-Jones - That’s not a mistake. As he said, the two ways of looking at it are equivalent.

[@cygil1]

Hilbert would like to have a word with you about the possibility of moving an infinite sequence. And Hilbert's Hotel result is widely accepted as a veridical paradox.

[@escapefelicity2913]

interesting stuff but a poor presentation

[@elplanetarojo9482]

turing won :)

[@KipIngram]

This payoff matrix is... boring. The player using the Arabic number strategies will always choose strategy 2 - it's best for him under all circumstances. Of course the Greek letter player will quickly figure that out and zero in on action alpha to minimize his losses. But what he'll really do is quite the came, because he has no way to win. Maybe a negative sign was left out somewhere here?

[@presidentoxford]

Appalling presenter

[@gmonkman]

congrats on your knobel award.

[@Tadesan]

What do you think is bad about his presentation? I'm curious.

[@maxwest6595]

You'd better make your own presentation then, numb-nuts.

[@denisdaly1708]

Anybody who picks their name as president Oxford, probably has an inflated superiority complex. Not surprised at the jealous arrogance of your comment.