This is the story that science writer Ananyo Bhattacharya tells with great deftness in The Man from the Future, giving von Neumann his rightful place among such better-known giants as Albert Einstein or J Robert Oppenheimer ... Bhattacharya tells the story tremendously well, situating von Neumann’s work — in fields from quantum mechanics to game theory to cellular automata — as comfortably as I’ve ever seen it done. He’s also good at deadpan humour.
... a lucid and rewarding new biography of von Neumann that otherwise visibly quivers from the noble effort to not use too many von Neumann anecdotes. Truth to tell, Bhattacharya, a physics scholar turned science writer, is less biographer than cartographer. The book doesn’t reveal many new details of von Neumann’s life and character, and our hero himself vanishes for pages at a time. Instead, Bhattacharya composes a rich intellectual map of von Neumann’s pursuits, shading in their histories and evolutions, and tracing the routes and connections between them. He recruits every ounce of your attention: Quantum physics, nuclear bomb-making, and computer architecture are all gnarly subjects. But through his narrative, we attend the raucous birth of these disciplines, with von Neumann hovering like a fussy midwife ... One of the finest aspects of Bhattacharya’s book is his delineation of how the nuclear bomb and the modern computer flowered in parallel, and how von Neumann buzzed between the two, cross-pollinating and nurturing until one now seems inconceivable without the other.
The Man From the Future is an apt title for Ananyo Bhattacharya’s brisk exploration of the products of this astonishingly fruitful mind, and where his glittering array of contributions to such diverse fields have taken us since ... Mr. Bhattacharya...is a first-rate guide to the dauntingly complex nuts and bolts of these abstruse subjects. Although I am skeptical that any attempts at popular explanations of quantum mechanics can succeed, the author’s crystal-clear prose and his keen ability to relate the essence of mathematical and physical problems in understandable terms work just about everywhere else, making for a tour de force of enjoyable science writing ... Mr. Bhattacharya...relies entirely on secondary sources, not even consulting the von Neumann papers at the Library of Congress ... This necessarily narrows Mr. Bhattacharya’s portrait of his subject; it also leads him into some inaccuracy and injustice to von Neumann and others ... It is, however, a marvelously bracing biography of the ideas of John von Neumann, ideas that continue to grow and flourish with a life of their own.
The Man From the Future...bills itself as a biography of von Neumann but is more devoted to exploring the ideas and technological inquiries he inspired ... Bhattacharya...doesn’t probe too deeply into...apparent contradictions. We get a brisk tour through the first three decades of von Neumann’s life ... [Von Neumann] was, as Bhattacharya puts it, 'a complex character,' and there are tantalizing glimmers of such human strangeness and complexity in this book. But The Man From the Future sometimes seems so focused on explicating that future — narrating the fates of von Neumann’s ideas long past his death, from cancer, in 1957 — that the man himself recedes from view ... The skill with which Bhattacharya teases apart dense scientific concepts left me feeling ambivalent. On the one hand, what we do see of von Neumann hints at such a fascinating personality that I wanted to know more.
Admirably compact ... Biography’s focus on the individual life comes with a temptation to overestimate one person’s historical importance, but it seems fair to claim there was no-one like von Neumann ... Bhattacharya, a seasoned science writer, is understandably selective about the maths, and focuses on work that had wider implications. There was a lot of that, too, and he works in impressively clear brief accounts of quantum mechanics, Gödel’s theorem, and the physics of explosives ... Bhattacharya manages to cover this dazzling range of ideas clearly and compellingly in not much more than 200 pages.
[Von Neumann] is largely forgotten by the public. Why? This book gives plenty of clues ... Perhaps that’s another reason he isn’t remembered: he just did too much. The list of his achievements is boggling, and each one is complex but fascinating. Unfortunately, each is made no less complex, and much less fascinating, by Ananyo Bhattacharya’s laborious approach, which gives the general reader little insight into the theories and scarcely any into the man.
Bhattacharya shows that von Neumann’s national security work was just a part of his scientific contributions that have more broadly shaped the world we live in ... The author...treats us to mini-biographies of the scientists and theorists who stood (and still stand) on the shoulders of von Neumann ... [An] impressive biography.
Bhattacharya’s admiration for his subject is clear ... But von Neumann ends up something of a bit player in his own story—instead of focusing on what made him tick, Bhattacharya spends most of his time on von Neumann’s ideas and discoveries and those who developed them further, and explanations of the underlying science remain fairly complex. Those with a strong grounding in the material will be entranced, though it’s likely too daunting for more casual readers.
A sharp, expansive biography ... In his riveting exploration of von Neumann’s life and work, medical researcher Bhattacharya...easily navigates among complicated concepts...and explains the significance of his subject’s accomplishments in terms that are easily understood by nonscientists. The author also deftly interweaves von Neumann’s personal life, relating anecdotes about his background and formative years in his native Hungary ... A salient portrait of one of the most electrifying and productive scientists of the past century.
