>>10533457He was much more creative than Von Neumann. Yes, he was no Von Neumann. He was a better discoverer. Von Neumann was an absolute genius mathematician and had mythical speed, but wasn't as original as Einstein was.
And this point of view comes from E. Wigner himself.
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A great quote from this review of George Dyson's Turing's Cathedral. Despite the title, von Neumann is the central character.
... mathematician John von Neumann, ... was incomparably intelligent, so bright that, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Eugene Wigner would say, "only he was fully awake."
More Wigner quotes:
I have known a great many intelligent people in my life. I knew Planck, von Laue and Heisenberg. Paul Dirac was my brother in law; Leo Szilard and Edward Teller have been among my closest friends; and Albert Einstein was a good friend, too. But none of them had a mind as quick and acute as Jansci [John] von Neumann. I have often remarked this in the presence of those men and no one ever disputed me.
... But Einstein's understanding was deeper even than von Neumann's. His mind was both more penetrating and more original than von Neumann's. And that is a very remarkable statement. Einstein took an extraordinary pleasure in invention. Two of his greatest inventions are the Special and General Theories of Relativity; and for all of Jansci's brilliance, he never produced anything as original.
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from
http://infoproc.blogspot.com/2012/03/only-he-was-fully-awake.html, but the quote is on solid sources
