Stanislaw Ulam

Polish-American mathematician · United States · Academics · Lived 1909 to 1984 · aged 75

Stanislaw Ulam is read about 569 times a day, in 55 languages.

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He helped invent the hydrogen bomb, then spent decades trying to dream up ways to use nuclear explosions for something other than war. The Monte Carlo method - now a workhorse of science and finance - came from realizing computers could brute-force problems math alone couldn't crack.

Scientists Academic Mathematics Physics Literature Science United States Americas

A life in dates

1984Died13 May 1984“Whatever is worth saying, can be stated in fifty words or less.”In their words17 May 1984as quoted by Gian-Carlo Rota in Words spoken at the memorial service for S. M. Ulam (The Lodge, Los Alamos, New Mexico, May 17, 1984),Read the whole statement

1983“Sometimes I feel that a more rational explanation for all that has happened during my lifetime is that I am still only thirteen years old, reading Jules Verne or H. G.”In their wordsPreface To the 1983 Edition, p. xxviiRead the whole statement

1955“The mathematicians know a great deal about very little and the physicists very little about a great deal.”In their words10 May 1955On the Ergodic Behavior of Dynamical Systems (LA-2055, May 10, 1955) inRead the whole statement

1909Born13 April 1909

Also in Deutsch

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STAN ULAM HOLDING THE FERMIAC

Stanislaw M. Ulam Los Alamos ID

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In their own words 10

Stanislaw Ulam

10 statements, newest first

Whatever is worth saying, can be stated in fifty words or less.
May 17, 1984, as quoted by Gian-Carlo Rota in Words spoken at the memorial service for S. M. Ulam (The Lodge, Los Alamos, New Mexico, May 17, 1984),, Own words
Sometimes I feel that a more rational explanation for all that has happened during my lifetime is that I am still only thirteen years old, reading Jules Verne or H. G.
1983, Preface To the 1983 Edition, p. xxvii, Own words
The mathematicians know a great deal about very little and the physicists very little about a great deal.
May 10, 1955, On the Ergodic Behavior of Dynamical Systems (LA-2055, May 10, 1955) in, Own words

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Awards

John von Neumann Prize

Commander with Star of the Order of Polonia Restituta

In their orbit 2

Spouse Francoise Ulam

Sibling Adam Ulam

About this person

Stanisław Ulam was born into a wealthy Polish Jewish family in Lemberg, Austria-Hungary, on 13 April 1909, earned his PhD in mathematics from the Lwów Polytechnic Institute in 1933, and sailed to the United States for the last time with his younger brother in August 1939. He joined the Manhattan Project in October 1943 at Los Alamos, working on implosion-weapon calculations and later on Edward Teller's "Super" hydrogen bomb design - which Ulam and a team of female computers proved unworkable. In January 1951, Ulam and Teller devised the Teller-Ulam design, the blueprint for every thermonuclear weapon since. After the war he turned to cellular automata, the Fermi-Pasta-Ulam-Tsingou problem that seeded nonlinear science, and nuclear pulse propulsion under Project Orion. He died on 13 May 1984, best remembered for seeing that computers could solve functions with no closed form by running the odds millions of times over.

Country

United States

Academics from the United States 6

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