Nicholas Metropolis - Anecdotes

Anecdotes

In his memoirs, Stanislaw Ulam remembers that a small group, including himself, Metropolis, Calkin, Konopinsky, Kistiakowsky, Teller and von Neumann, spent several evenings at Los Alamos playing poker. They played for very small sums, but: "Metropolis once described what a triumph it was to win ten dollars from John von Neumann, author of a famous treatise on game theory. He then bought his book for five dollars and pasted the other five inside the cover as a symbol of his victory." In another passage of his book, Ulam describes Metropolis as "a Greek-American with a wonderful personality."

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