Was scientist John von Neumann an autodidact or not?

[astro]

This wiki article on autodidacticsm cites John von Neumann as a famous autodidact, but this wiki biogives no indication that he was “self taught” and described a fairly conventional and extensive high level education.

John von Neumann was famous for being the best mathematician of his time, yet even during his time at MIT, fellow students were occasionally (but regularly) shocked when von Neumann would have no idea about the material they were discussing. Because he was so self-educated, he had holes in the material which the more-formally-educated students had covered in their courses.

He received his Ph.D. in mathematics (with minors in experimental physics and chemistry) from Pázmány Péter University in Budapest at the age of 22.[2] He simultaneously earned his diploma in chemical engineering from the ETH Zurich in Switzerland[2] at the behest of his father, who wanted his son to invest his time in a more financially viable endeavour than mathematics. Between 1926 and 1930, he taught as a privatdozent at the University of Berlin, the youngest in its history. By age 25, he had published ten major papers, and by 30, nearly 36.

Which is right?

[Nametag]

Von Neumann was never a student at MIT. I suspect the article is supposed to be about Richard Feynmann.

[Francis_Vaughan]

Probably the Wikipedia disease. You have no idea who wrote the article. It could have been some 15 year old kid who was simply cutting pasting stuff he found with Google.

OTOH the academic profile isn’t inconsistent with an autodiadact. There is no information about school level education or undergraduate courses. But it is hard since different degree structures can vary wildy. A PhD in Hungary could be vastly different to the US, German or British patterns (which are different enough already.) Typically you don’t have minors with a PhD. It is a research degree by thesis. On a single subject. Indeed a PhD is in some ways a perfect vehicle for an autodiadact - being as it is individual and novel work. In the British PhD system there isn’t even any course work, whilst the US system typically includes a significant amount of qualifying coursework as part of the degree structure. So without knowing what the Hungarian system was at athe time, it is hard to judge what the answer is.

[Sage_Rat]

I took four years of Japanese language courses in college. However, while I am fluent in Japanese, I learned nothing in my Japanese language courses in college. I taught myself by watching Japanese TV and reading books in Japanese.

Being self-taught and going to school are not mutually exclusive if the person is sufficiently interested in the topic and his teachers have insufficient ability to teach the material or at least teach it too slow for the student to bother caring.

[Hari_Seldon]

The story is implausible. Hungary had a rich mathematical culture; ot rivaled that of Germany and France and was light years ahead of the US at the time. Von Neumann’s interests ranged all the way from applied math to logic.

If the story were told of Wiener (who spent his career at MIT) and was from Kansas, I would find it just possible.

[Wendell_Wagner]

I think the best thing would be to ignore the article about autodidacts. I don’t know who the anecdote is supposed to be about. It can’t be Von Neumann or Weiner, who weren’t students at M.I.T. at any point. It can’t be Feynman, who wasn’t a mathematician. It really doesn’t make any sense.

[Exapno_Mapcase]

Websites have some amazing errors in them, even the ones that seem authoritative.

Take this bio of von Neumann on the The International Society for Complexity, Information, and Design (ISCID)

Von Neumann studied chemistry at the University of Berlin, until 1923 when he went to Technische Hochschule in Zurich where he received his diploma in Chemical Engineering in 1925. Von Neumann subsequently received his doctoral degree in Mathematics in 1928 from the University of Budapest at the age of twenty-two. His dissertation topic was set theory.

Seems specific and researched. Until you remember that von Neumann was born in December 1903, making him 24 in 1928. Turns out that neither the 1925 nor the 1928 date is correct.

Here’s a better history

In 1911 von Neumann entered the Lutheran Gymnasium. The school had a strong academic tradition which seemed to count for more than the religious affiliation both in the Neumann’s eyes and in those of the school. His mathematics teacher quickly recognised von Neumann’s genius and special tuition was put on for him. The school had another outstanding mathematician one year ahead of von Neumann, namely Eugene Wigner.

World War I had relatively little effect on von Neumann’s education but, after the war ended, Béla Kun controlled Hungary for five months in 1919 with a Communist government. The Neumann family fled to Austria as the affluent came under attack. However, after a month, they returned to face the problems of Budapest. When Kun’s government failed, the fact that it had been largely composed of Jews meant that Jewish people were blamed. Such situations are devoid of logic and the fact that the Neumann’s were opposed to Kun’s government did not save them from persecution.

In 1921 von Neumann completed his education at the Lutheran Gymnasium. His first mathematics paper, written jointly with Fekete the assistant at the University of Budapest who had been tutoring him, was published in 1922. However Max Neumann did not want his son to take up a subject that would not bring him wealth. Max Neumann asked Theodore von Kármán to speak to his son and persuade him to follow a career in business. Perhaps von Kármán was the wrong person to ask to undertake such a task but in the end all agreed on the compromise subject of chemistry for von Neumann’s university studies.

Hungary was not an easy country for those of Jewish descent for many reasons and there was a strict limit on the number of Jewish students who could enter the University of Budapest. Of course, even with a strict quota, von Neumann’s record easily won him a place to study mathematics in 1921 but he did not attend lectures. Instead he also entered the University of Berlin in 1921 to study chemistry.

Von Neumann studied chemistry at the University of Berlin until 1923 when he went to Zurich. He achieved outstanding results in the mathematics examinations at the University of Budapest despite not attending any courses. Von Neumann received his diploma in chemical engineering from the Technische Hochschule in Zürich in 1926. While in Zurich he continued his interest in mathematics, despite studying chemistry, and interacted with Weyl and Pólya who were both at Zurich. He even took over one of Weyl’s courses when he was absent from Zurich for a time. Pólya said [18]:-

Johnny was the only student I was ever afraid of. If in the course of a lecture I stated an unsolved problem, the chances were he’d come to me as soon as the lecture was over, with the complete solution in a few scribbles on a slip of paper.

Von Neumann received his doctorate in mathematics from the University of Budapest, also in 1926, with a thesis on set theory. He published a definition of ordinal numbers when he was 20, the definition is the one used today.

Apparently von Neumann never got formal academic education in math at the higher levels. He was amazingly facile and expert in math, but it could easily be true that he wouldn’t know specific areas covered in classes. Describing him as an autodidact in math would be a perfectly accurate description. But the classes would be at the Zurich Technische Hochschule, not MIT.

[ElvisL1ves]

Working at the frontier in any field makes you an autodidact in that area by definition. In mathematics particularly, true pioneering work depends more on intuition and insight than on accumulating a knowledge of facts and history guided by someone else. For someone whose interests and accomplishments were as wide-ranging, of course most of the background material needed would have had to be self-taught. Whatever von Neumann’s various sheepskins might have said, I think it’s fair to use the term for him.

[Tom_Tildrum]

Von Neumann wrote lesson plans for himself that then turned themselves into more lesson plans.

[Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus]

Consider also that Von Neumann was a computer scientist–i.e. a practitioner in a field that barely existed yet. Granted that much of the theory and content of the field was rooted in mathematics, there were still no degree programs in computer science or computer engineering. So in a way everyone working in that field, at the time, was an autodidact.

[Capt.Ridley_s_Shooting_Party]

von Neumann worked all over mathematics. I don’t think it’s fair to describe him as a computer scientist, since arguably his most enduring work was done in pure mathematics (the concept of the set-wise hierarchy, inner models, etc.)

[ElvisL1ves]

It would be fair to call him a physicist too, for his role in the Manhattan Project. The man was incredible.

[KarlGauss]

A common sentiment among those who knew von Neumann (a group including many of the intellectual giants of the 20th century in fields like math, set theory and logic, inchoate computer science, economics, physics, etc.,) was that he was the smartest person they had ever encountered.

In terms of his autodidacticism, as a child he is said to have read an authoritative massive, multi-volume encyclopedia and effortlessly learned its contents. Perhaps that’s not too surprising given that he had a photographic memory. Years after reading the encyclopedia (or any other book he’d read), if someone began to read a page or paragraph of it to him, he could instantly pick up where the text was, begin reciting it aloud, from memory, and continue until told to stop.