John Von Neumann Collection

The collection consists of twenty-nine autograph letters and a typed manuscript (copy) of the mathematician John Von Neumann. ‡b The letters were sent to Von Neumann's mathematics professor, Gábor Szegő, spanning a period of twenty-three years, starting when Neumann was in his last year of high school. In the first thirteen letters, penned during his high school years, Neumann writes about mathematical problems and solutions. In a letter dated February 28, 1933, he writes about teaching at Princeton University as a visiting professor, and in the letter dated October 12, 1933, when he was at the Institute For Advanced Study, he writes about the American system of recruiting staff members at American universities. Other topics include the Depression of 1934, his lectures at different universities, quantum theory and quantum mechanics, his second marriage, and his childhood friend, Princeton's Nobel laureate physicist Eugene Wigner.The 30 p. typescript is a copy of a lecture titled \An Adaptation of the MADDIDA : A Digital Differential Analyser of Northrup Aircraft, Inc.\ According to a handwritten note at the bottom of p. 1, the lecture was presented during the Cowles Commission Conference at the University of Chicago in 1949.Also included is a photocopy of and article by Charles E. Pepper from the Princeton Alumni Weekly issue of June 7, 1966 titled \The Computer - Big Machine on Campus,\ in which he writes about a new computer at Princeton University and mentions the first computer built by Von Neumann, which is displayed at the Smithsonian Institute.