well,” said the dean. “Then I suppose there’s nothing left to say. How old are you, my boy?”
“Twenty.”
“You’re still so young … too young. Perhaps you’ll still be able to set things right sometime in the future. But don’t waste time; the early years are essential for physicists. It’s one of those unwritten rules, unfair as they may be, but you must know it by heart: After turning thirty, a physicist is through. Through. I’m telling you this from experience.”
“Thank you for your advice, sir.”
His appointment with Professor Von Neumann, on Tuesday at three in the afternoon, flashed through Bacon’s mind, but the dean quickly interrupted his reverie:
“All right, then, get out of here.”
HYPOTHESIS II: On Von Neumann and the War
“My name is Bacon, Professor. Francis Bacon.”
Frank had arrived at the institute at the agreed-upon hour. He had put on one of his best suits, rat-gray, and a tie with a pattern that looked like little giraffes.
“Oh, yes, Bacon. Born January 22, 1561, at York House. Died 1626. A lunatic, unfortunately. But, oh, yes, what a fertile mind. Did you know I could recite the entire Novum Organum for you, line by line, right now if I wanted? But I suppose that would be rather boring for you. Anyway, I have another appointment that I don’t want to be too late for.”
Of all the men of modern science, nobody seemed able to warm up to the cunning, turbulent nature of numbers quite as John von Neumann had. As a young scholar at Princeton, where he spent a few months as a professor of mathematics, he had acquired a reputation for being one of the most intelligent men in the entire world—and, at the same time, one of the worst professors imaginable. His name in Germany was Johannes, a transliteration of the original Hungarian Janós, and so he had little apprehension about translating it into English in order to adapt to the more casual way of his adopted country. Born in Budapest in 1903, he became Johnny von Neumann in the United States, which made him an odd mix of Scotch whisky and Czech beer. He was now only thirty-seven, but his career as a child prodigy had catapulted him early on into the pantheon of contemporary mathematics. For the past few months, he was also the youngest member of the Institute for Advanced Study. Bacon had never taken any of his courses, but the Princeton campus was rife with tales of the professor’s many eccentricities, and Bacon was familiar with all of them. As he would soon hear for himself, Von Neumann had a peculiar accent that was not precisely the result of his Central European provenance—in fact, many people said he had simply invented it himself. He always wore the same uniform, a neat, coffee-colored suit that he never varied, not even during the summer or for excursions into the nearby countryside. In addition to his gift for rapid-fire mathematical calculations, he also had a photographic memory: After merely scanning a page of text or quickly reading through a novel he could recite it by heart, from start to finish without committing a single error. He had done this several times with A Tale of Two Cities.
Impatient by nature, Von Neumann despised his students; he abhorred their slow minds and the countless unnecessary repetitions he was often obliged to parcel out, like a country farmer feeding his chickens. Worst of all, however, were the expressions of shock and fear that registered upon his students’ faces whenever they attempted to decipher one of his elegant, eloquent equations. Nobody, but nobody, was able to understand his lectures, simply because of the absurd speed at which he gave them. By the time a student had begun to copy out some labyrinthine formula Von Neumann had quickly scratched out on the blackboard, the surprisingly nimble professor had already grabbed his eraser and leapt into the next problem, as if the blackboard were a giant Broadway billboard. During Von Neumann’s tenure at Princeton, only one graduate student had managed to finish his thesis under Von Neumann’s direction, and after that experience, the professor knew he would never again put himself through the tedium of rereading poorly written proofs and decoding someone else’s muddle of arithmetic nonsense. When Abraham Flexner invited Von Neumann to join the institute, he was quick to mention that Von Neumann would have no teaching obligations whatsoever, just like all the other professors there. The mathematician gladly accepted the offer; this way, he would be forever free from the bothersome plague of busybody coeds who couldn’t even tell Mozart from Beethoven.
“I have to go now. A meeting with the inner sanctum, if you know what I mean. Tea and cookies and all those illustrious names. Well, not quite as illustrious as yours, but prominent enough that I shouldn’t be late, you know?” He stopped for a second. He was stocky, even slightly chubby, with a greasy double chin hiding beneath his rounded beard. His accent was truly impossible to place. “What are we going to do with you, Bacon? I’m sorry to have kept you waiting, I didn’t expect … Well, you tell me what to do.” Bacon tried in vain to say something. The way Von Neumann carried on a conversation reminded him of the caterpillar’s erratic, long-winded pronouncements in Alice in Wonderland. “All right, all right, that’s a fine idea, Bacon. Listen, tomorrow I’m throwing a little party, you know. I try to do that every so often; this place can be so boring sometimes. I’m always telling my wife that we should open a bar here, like the kind in Budapest, but she never listens to me. All right, I have to go now. I’ll expect you then, at my house tomorrow. Five o’clock, before the other guests arrive … One of those receptions, you know? To keep us from dying of boredom. I suppose you’ve heard about them. All right, I have to go. I’m sorry. Five o’clock, then. Don’t forget.”
“But, Professor …” Bacon tried interrupting him.
“I told you already, we’ll discuss your problem later on. At length, I promise. Now, if you’ll be so kind …”
After several minutes battling with an obtuse secretary to obtain the professor’s home address, Bacon finally arrived at Von Neumann’s house, at 26 Westcott Road, punctual as always. A pair of waiters were busy unloading trays of sandwiches from a catering truck parked in front of the main door to the house, carrying them methodically to the kitchen, like a team of laborers preparing to feed an ant farm. Bacon would never have admitted it, but of course he had heard about Von Neumann’s receptions. His guest list was like a Who’s Who of the Princeton intellectual scene; even Einstein was rumored to have dropped in on occasion. During this particular time, an atmosphere of war hovered over everything—after all, in less than a year Pearl Harbor would be bombed. But here, people seemed intent upon acting as if the world were the same as ever. Or perhaps people simply wanted to enjoy the last moments of calm before the storm hit.
Bacon rang the doorbell and waited a few seconds, but nobody answered. Emboldened, he entered the house along with one of the waiters and began timidly whispering, “Professor? Professor Von Neumann?” in a voice so low that nobody would have heard, even if standing three feet away. After a few minutes, a maid finally noticed him and went upstairs to announce his arrival to Von Neumann. Then the professor appeared, half dressed, with his jacket on and a tie slung over his arm.
“Bacon!”
“Yes, Professor.”
“You, you again!” He sat down in one of the living room chairs and signaled for Bacon to do the same. He began buttoning his shirt with his little fingers, fat as grapes. “Your persistence doesn’t bother me at all, no, not at all, but have some manners. I’m about to throw a party, you know? Wouldn’t you agree that this isn’t exactly the best moment to have a discussion about physics?”
“But you asked me to come, Professor.”
“Nonsense,
