NOTE: Enjoy this excerpt from The American Daily Reader, by CatholicVote president Brian Burch and Emily Stimpson Chapman. To order the complete volume, visit the CatholicVote store today!
CV NEWS FEED // In 1930, the 26–year–old John von Neumann met and fell in love with Mariette Kôvesi. Von Neumann was an agnostic Jew, born, raised, and educated in Hungary. Mariette was a German Catholic. If von Neumann wanted to marry her, he needed to convert. He was baptized shortly before their wedding day.
Von Neumann’s conversion, however, was in name only. He rarely went to Mass after their marriage (and never after their 1938 divorce). Publicly and professionally, he continued to profess agnosticism.
Von Neumann moved to the United States in the fall of 1930 to teach at Princeton University. Three years later, he received one of the first two faculty positions at Princeton’s Institute of Advanced Study. The other went to Albert Einstein. There, von Neumann made landmark contributions to quantum mechanics, game theory, computer science, and mathematics. He eventually joined the Manhattan Project—-helping develop, test, and launch the world’s first nuclear bombs. Later, he led the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission and helped devise the Cold War “peacekeeping” strategy of Mutually Assured Destruction. For his work, von Neumann received numerous awards and honors, including the U.S. Navy’s Distinguished Civilian Service Award and the Medal of Freedom.
In 1955, however, when cancer appeared in his bones, von Neumann began rethinking both his agnosticism and his life. One year later, shortly before he died, the loud, boisterous, brilliant polymath who had annoyed Einstein by playing deafening marching band music at the office, summoned a priest to his bedside.
Reiterating Pascal’s Wager, von Neumann explained to the priest that, in the time that remained to him, he’d rather run the risk of believing in God than run the risk of not believing in God.
Von Neumann then confessed his sins and received Last Rites.
Although many of his colleagues doubted the sincerity of his conversion, von Neumann remained in good standing with the Church until his death on February 8, 1957.
