Appointment for a Gamesman

President Eisenhower last week named John Von Neumann, 50, a cheerful, portly professor with a passion for cookies and ionospheric mathematical problems, to be a member of the Atomic Energy Commission for a five-year term. Mathematician Von Neumann,* a Budapest-born naturalized American, has been a professor at Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study for 21 years, and is a close friend of Drs. Albert Einstein and J. Robert Oppenheimer. He and his unique theories and formulas are the talk of economists and mathematicians the world over.

Dr. Von Neumann is one of the masterminds behind many electronic brains that extrapolate election figures, coordinate weather data, and work out staggering mathematical problems far beyond the scope of human brain power (Univac, Eniac, etc.). In 1951 he designed an electronic calculator, Maniac (mathematical analyzer, numerical integrator and computer), that in six months (instead of several lifetimes) made the H-bomb calculations derived from the equations of his fellow Hungarian, Dr. Edward Teller.

As a young man, Dr. Von Neumann became fascinated with the game of poker, and after 15 years of study, he evolved mathematical descriptions for the strategical conflict involved. A nonstrategical game (e.g., craps) can be scientifically described in familiar terms of probability. But a strategical game, like poker, where the player has a choice, and where winning or losing may depend on finding out what is in an opponent's mind and concealing what is in one's own, is far more difficult to cope with theoretically. Von Neumann gets at the heart of the strategic conflict through the concept of "Mini-max," the point where the most gain that A can be sure of making meets the amount that B can be sure of limiting A to. Von Neumann's theory of games was developed as part of an effort to understand the economic behavior of individuals in buying-selling and other operations.

A basic Von Neumann equation reads:

Max-Min-K( -L- Min-Max-K(.)

This theorem, which mathematicians find charming, is said to be the first really serious attempt to explain the word "strategy," and it may well be. The Navy and the Air Force have both worked for years to apply the theory of games to practical military problems.

In addition to Hungarian and English, Von Neumann speaks French and German, and has a large brown dog named Inverse. People who should know say that Von Neumann is eminently qualified to sit across the atomic table from the Russians in the greatest game in the world.

* For other news of Von Neumann see SCIENCE.

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