December 28, 1903 a mind unlike any other was born, Janos Neumann. Janos Neumann was the first born son of Max Neumann, a non-practicing Hungarian Jew. Max Neumann had very good education, he became a doctor of laws and later worked as a lawyer for a bank. Early in Janos ' life, Max bought a title which he never used but his son, Janos did. The Neumann 's lived in Budapest Hungary, and although they were a Jewish family, they did not observe the strict practices of the Jewish faith, and instead seemed to mix both the Jewish and Christian traditions. At a young age Janos had a wide range of interests. At six years old, von Neumann could divide eight-digit numbers in his head, by age eight he became fascinated by history and ready all 44 volumes of the Universal History in his family’s library. In the Prisoner 's Dilemma by William Poundstone he writes about Janos von Neumann’s incredible memory: "At the age of six, he was able to exchange jokes with his father in classical Greek. The Neumann family sometimes entertained guests with demonstrations of Johnny 's ability to memorize phone books. A guest would select a page and column of …show more content…
Von Neumann also served on numerous committees. In 1937 he won the Bocher Prize, which is the American Mathematical Society 's highest award. Soon after, he was elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Sciences, the American Philosophical Society. He was also a member of foreign scientific academies, the Academia Nacional de Ciencias Exactas in Lima, Peru, Academia Nazionale dei Lincei in Rome, Italy, and the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences and Letters in Amsterdam, The