The Maniac summary

János Lajos Neumann was born in 1903 into a wealthy Jewish family in Hungary. His lifelong friend and fellow scientist, Eugene Wigner, recounts his early life.

János arrives at Wigner and his elite Hungarian school in 1914, the same year World War I begins. Even as a young boy, he astounds his teachers with his brilliant intellect. An early glimpse of his intellect comes from his mathematics tutor, Gábor Szegő. After their first meeting, Szegő comes home in tears clutching crumpled papers on which he’d written problems that had stumped him for months – problems that János has casually solved. János is just 10 years old. Szegő knows, even then, that this boy will alter the course of mathematics.

For the rest of his life, von Neumann – now John or “Johnny” – lives in America. Johnny’s second wife Klara or “Klari” Dan describes their turbulent marriage and life together.

Johnny takes a position at Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Study. There, he develops a rivalry with Albert Einstein; von Neumann mocks Einstein’s clothes and pacifism, while Einstein sees von Neumann as childish and nihilistic, calling him a “mathematical weapon.”

Julian Bigelow is a computer engineer. He describes his chance encounter with von Neumann, by then a renowned mathematician and weapons consultant. Bigelow mentions his classified work on ENIAC, the first digital computer, built for artillery calculations. Intrigued, von Neumann demands to see the machine himself and hires Bigelow to help build an even better computer.

With no building space allotted, Bigelow and von Neumann set up shop in Kurt Gödel’s unused secretary’s office, drawing inspiration from his pioneering work on computability theory. Exiled to the basement, they toil for years to construct von Neumann’s blueprint for a stored-program computer based on the visions of Alan Turing.

Lee Sedol is a Korean child prodigy who from the age of five becomes obsessed with the ancient game of Go. Enrolling in a specialized academy, he studies the game incessantly; 12 hours a day, seven days per week. Though shy and awkward, Sedol is creatively brilliant. His unique and intuitive play soon makes him a top player; one whose play becomes even more aggressive and impulsive after his father's death. After winning dozens of titles, Sedol is considered the greatest Go player of the modern era.

But in March 2016 he faces a new challenge: a five-game match with the AI system AlphaGo. Sedol is confident. Go has long been seen as too intuitive and complex for machines to master, but AlphaGo stuns the world, winning the first three games decisively. In Game 4, facing humiliation, a desperate Sedol unfurls a move of pure creative madness. This single shocking play upends the game and sends AlphaGo into a tailspin. He wins Game 4, preventing a sweep. While ultimately losing the match, Sedol’s creative play seemed to show that human victory was possible, prompting rapturous celebrations of humanity’s ingenuity.