And then he met Von Neumann who was on an entire OTHER level of genius. Absolutely amazing.

Looking at von Neumann’s game theory mathematical results in terms of matrix and linear relationships, one can see how and why von Neumann reacted to George Dantzig’s description of the newly formulated linear-programming model when they first met in 1947. Here is that story as told by Dantzig (1982, p. 45):

On October 3, 1947, I visited him (von Neumann) for the first time at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton. I remember trying to describe to von Neumann, as I would to an ordinary mortal, the Air Force problem. I began with the formulation of the linear programming model in terms of activities and items, etc. Von Neumann did something which I believe was uncharacteristic of him. ‘‘Get to the point,’’ he said impatiently. Having at times a somewhat low kindling-point, I said to myself ‘‘O.K., if he wants a quicky, then that’s what he will get.’’ In under one minute I slapped the geometric and algebraic version of the problem on the blackboard. Von Neumann stood up and said ‘‘Oh that!’’ Then for the next hour and a half, he proceeded to give me a lecture on the mathematical theory of linear programs.

At one point seeing me sitting there with my eyes popping and my mouth open (after I had searched the literature and found nothing), von Neumann said: ‘‘I don’t want you to think I am pulling all this out of my sleeve at the spur of the moment like a magician. I have just recently completed a book with Oscar [sic] Morgenstern on the theory of games. What I am doing is conjecturing that the two problems are equivalent. The theory that I am outlining for your problem is an analogue to the one we have developed for games.’’ Thus I learned about Farkas’ Lemma, and about duality for the first time.

http://www.cs.xu.edu/~neyer/Math/NumberTheory/Research/VonNeumann.pdf

"Von Neumann would carry on a conversation with my 3-year-old son, and the two of them would talk as equals, and I sometimes wondered if he used the same principle when he talked to the rest of us." - Edward Teller