A Pilgrimage to John von Neumann’s Birthplace
We were in Europe recently for a few weeks, and spent a few days in the beautiful city of Budapest, Hungary, a city rich in history. Our hotel was directly across the river from the neo-Gothic Hungarian Parliament building, a building I could stare for hours, if I had the time1. There was much to see in Budapest, and we had only a few days to pack it all in. But there was one thing I wanted to see, one special pilgrimage I wanted to make: find the birthplace of John von Neumann.
When traveling in other cities, my morning walks continue unabated. I rise early, no matter the time zone, and head out, usually without a plan, to wander the streets of a city sleeping. I love passing through cities like this, away from the traffic and crowds, with time to look at what I am seeing and consider it. We were in Europe for 17 days and with the exception of our very last day, when we had a 6am flight, I wandered the city I was in every morning.
My first morning in Budapest was different from all of the other cities, however. I had a plan. We were on a tour and had gotten to know some of our fellow tourists. Some would ask me, “Are you heading out to walk the city in the morning?” and I responded by telling them I was getting up earlier than usual to seek out John von Neumann’s birthplace.
“Who is that?” was the unanimous reply. Even our tour director, an encyclopedia of knowledge about the places we visited, said that he didn’t know who that was. That was depressing, especially considering how much von Neumann shaped our modern life. You could look him up on Wikipedia, but even better would be to read Ananyo Bhattacharya excellent biography, Man From the Future: The Visionary Life of John von Neumann (2022). von Neumann was a prodigy, mathematician, physicist, and computer scientist who worked on the Manhattan Project, helped to pioneer game theory2, and helped invent the modern computer.
I headed out of the hotel at 5:30am on July 23 for what turned out to be a nearly 6.5 kilometer (when in Europe, use the metric system) roundtrip walk. I walked across the bridge on the southern end of Margaret Island and continued into the quiet city streets. At some point, I turned right off the main road into a narrow street where I walked for a few blocks until I turned left, and finally I reached the building where John von Neumann was born and lived until he was 18 years old.
John von Neumann’s birthplace.
The plaque honoring von Neumann on the side of the building.When I walk through these cities early in the morning, I try to absorb their history, what came before, and how things might have looked, and smelled, and felt back then. I stepped across the street from the building to take a photo. I was standing in a place where von Neumann almost certainly passed each day he lived here. This was building von Neumann lived where, at six years old, he was conversant in ancient Greek, and where, a few years later, he was doing calculus.
I lingered for as long as I could, taking it all in, trying to see von Neumann walking into and out of his building. But I had a long way to walk back, and I decided that rather than retrace my route, I’d make a big circle, I navigated toward the Parliament building and south toward the Chain Bridge. I took the pedestrian route across the bridge, and then followed the river back to my hotel, glowing a feeling genuine achievement: I’d made my pilgrimage to John von Neumann’s birth place.
Crossing the Chain BridgeDid you enjoy this post?
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