I had a standard answer to the question with which adults love to torture adolescents: “What do you want to be/do when you grow up?” “I don’t know,” I would reply, “but I do know two things I won’t do: marry an academic or become one myself.” So what happened?

Early Imprints

Like most accounts of “how I came to be what I am,” mine begins with my parents and the environment, or environments – for they went their separate ways before I reached my third birthday – in which they immersed me. John von Neumann and his bride, Mariette, were both privileged, protected children of Budapest’s Jewish but fully assimilated haute bourgeoisie, born at a time when that city was a flourishing second capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. This golden age came to an abrupt end with the shock of the First World War and its aftermath: the breakup of the Empire, the 133 days of “Red Terror” brought on by a Communist coup and the declaration of the Soviet Hungarian Republic, and the creeping anti-Semitism that characterized the regime of Admiral Horthy, who led a successful counter-coup and was installed as head of state. He held that position until 1944, by which time my parents had re-created their lives in the new world across the Atlantic.