Thanks for the smile, Ernst.
János von Neumann the Hungarian is different to the Max Newman
(from London) who's father was German and called Neumann.
Strange coincidence!
http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Newman.html
It is a remarkable event, that I hadn't realised before, that the
first 2 (real) computers used Neumann and Von Neumann architectures!
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> Many thanks to Paul Landon for the very informative and enjoyable
> trilogy about the history of computer testing of Mersenne numbers!
>
> So Newman of Manchester was apparently the first - wait, I just got
> an e-mail from someone with the handle [EMAIL PROTECTED] -
> must work for some cryptography outfit. No, he goes on to explain that
The German Neumann did indeed work for some cryptography
outfit. The history linked to above says "From 1916 until 1919 he
undertook work related to the war, doing various jobs such as army
paymaster and schoolmaster."
There is some data there significant by it's ommission - it is
very vague. Most people in the military had precise ranks,
positions and regiments and after the war are very well recorded.
I guess being a Cryptographer and a German speaker it is possible
that he worked for one of those (shhh!) organisations that don't
publicly overtly state their purpose.
[comments in square brackets are mine]
"In 1942 he joined the Government Code and Cipher School [at
Bletchley Park] and worked there with Turing."
Bletchley Park, otherwise known as Station X has been
referred to as "Britain's Best Kept Secret". It was home to the
Ultra Project (which decrypted almost all of Germany's top level
comms) and the Colossus machines.
http://www.cranfield.ac.uk/ccc/bpark/
http://www.bletchleypark.org.uk/
http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Turing.html
"The decoding operation at Bletchley Park became the basis for
the new decoding and intelligence work at GCHQ. With the cold
war this became an important operation and Turing continued to
work for GCHQ, although his Manchester colleagues were totally
unaware of this. Now after his conviction [for Homosexuality],
his security clearance was withdrawn. Worse than that, security
officers were now extremely worried that someone with complete
knowledge of the work going on at GCHQ was now labelled a
security risk. He had many foreign colleagues, as any academic
would, but the police began to investigate his foreign visitors.
A holiday which Turing took in Greece in 1953 caused consternation
among the security officers.
Turing died of potassium cyanide poisoning while conducting
electrolysis experiments. The cyanide was found on a half eaten
apple beside him. An inquest concluded that it was self-
administered but his mother always maintained that it was an
accident."
There are other examples of such accidents amongst EX military
intelligence people around that time.
At first Turing was working in Manchester for Newman without
pay (from Manchester).
> "...Thanks to ze efforts of some enlightened mediums who are
> knowledgeable about zis 'Internetz' of your modern era, selected
> of us restless departed souls have been granted limited browsing
> und e-mail privileges from ze great beyond. Zese mediums are
> automatically transcribing ze voices zey hear, vich means zat
> my missives vill probably sound like badly accented Tcherman,
> even zo in reality mein written English ist sehr gut."
>
> {Bunch of blah blah about his childhood and career snipped...
> can we just cut to the chase here, fella?}
>
> "...ze very first thing I typed into zis 'search maschine' was
> ze phrase 'Mersenne prime', und I haff subsequently spent many
> months vading sroo mostly tedious messages about 'Mein Komputer
> ist so much faster zen yoors' und 'mein Hard drive ist very big',
> but occasionally encountering an item of genuine interest, zo
> ze accompanying mathematics ist usually ganz falsch. Ze recent
> posting by Mr. P. Landon of Lucent Technologie vus very interesting,
> but I must state for ze rekord zat I vas avare of zis at ze time.
> After all, Newman vas really chust a persona I invented so I could
> obtain verk in England. Ze phrase 'Neu Mann' translates into 'New
> man' in English. Neumann/Newman - quite clever, nicht wahr?"
Well spotted that I work for Lucent TechnologIE GmbH.
All of my friends and colleagues do speak like that ;-)
Pröst,
Herr P. Landon
(a persona I invented to work for the Nürnberg Labs :-)
_________________________________________________________________
Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm
Mersenne Prime FAQ -- http://www.tasam.com/~lrwiman/FAQ-mers
