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Cover Quote: December 1968

Let me come now to the less obvious things. In physics, particularly in theoretical physics, it is clear that mathematical methods play a great role and that to a large extent they are of the same variety as pure mathematics, that is, they are abstract and analytical. However, effective computing plays a role in physics which is larger than the role one would expect it to have in mathematics proper. For instance, there are large areas of modern quantum theory in which effective iterative computing could play a large role. A considerable segment of chemistry could be moved from the laboratory field into the purely theoretical and mathematical field if one could integrate the applicable equations of quantum theory. Quantum mechanics and chemistry offer a continuous spectrum of problems of increasing difficulty and increasing complexity, treating, for example, atoms with increasing numbers of electrons and molecules with increasing numbers of valence electrons. Almost any improvement in our standards of computing would open important new areas of application and would make new areas of chemistry accessible to strictly theoretical methods.



- John von Neumann
Theory of Self-Reproducing Automata, 1966
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