It's odd that even today, different disciplines are still silo'd. My son started a research cross-database search engine because different disciplies use different terms for nearly identical concepts. Even within medicine it's silo'd.

Trouble with that startup was, the medical folks with money don't use computer tools. And the students in training have no money.

He's definitely the one guy from the 20th century I can't really reconcile his capability and breadth, other than being an alien or a time traveller.

Nash's game theory dissertation was something von Neumann considered obvious and not particularly noteworthy, if I remember my lore right. He was among the first game theorists, focusing more on collaborative games than pure strategic/competitive games.

Einstein built on the shoulders of Riemann, Gauss, and others when considering the universe might be non-Euclidean!

All brilliant people, many singular minds of great repute, yet, all improved by the rest.

Genuinely curious, because I know von Neumann was an intellectual giant, but what was his most original/groundbreaking contribution? My impression of his work has always been that he would survey a field, find some particular problem that needed attending to, tidily solve it, then move on to some other domain. But I guess there's a latent assumption there that he didn't do anything huge or groundbreaking.

Shannon may be gaining on him.

Definitely my favorite physicist for the same reason you state. The notion that he just went around different fields and said “here’s how math can improve things,” invented some new approach, and moved on to another field to do it all over again just cracks me up.