ABSTRACT
John Von Neumann was a brilliant mathematician who made important contributions to quantum physics, to logic, to meteorology, to war, to the theory and applications of high-speed computing machines, and, via the mathematical theory of games of strategy, to economics. His definition of ordinal numbers (published when he was 20) is the one that is now universally adopted. His Ph.D. dissertation was about set theory too; his axiomatization has left a permanent mark on the subject. He kept up his interest in set theory and logic most of his life, even though he was shaken by K. Godel’s proof of the impossibility of proving that mathematics is consistent. As a writer of mathematics von Neumann was clear, but not clean; he was powerful but not elegant. He seemed to love fussy detail, needless repetition, and notation so explicit as to be confusing.
