Adventures of a Mathematician
Sloan Foundation Film
Release Date
2020
Film Synopsis
Polish immigrant and mathematician Stan Ulam helps create the hydrogen bomb and the first computer.
Based on the autobiography “Adventures of a Mathematician” by Stanislaw Ulam.
Cambridge, USA, 1942.
Stan Ulam is a 30-year-old talented Polish Jewish mathematician, a good-looking bon vivant who is quick with a joke. Stan’s life becomes complicated when he loses his fellowship at Harvard, but his best friend, the Hungarian genius Johnny von Neumann, quickly offers him a mysterious job which takes him to New Mexico.
Stan moves to Los Alamos with Françoise, a French woman he meets and marries after a whirlwind romance. Surrounded by young, eccentric, charismatic immigrant scientists, Stan begins top secret work on a nuclear bomb that could potentially blow up the entire world.
While desperately trying to help his sister flee Nazi-occupied Poland, Stan teams up with Johnny to create the first computer, giving birth to the digital age as Europe bursts into flames.
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Possible Topics
- The Manhattan Project and nuclear weapons
- Science and ethics
- The birth of computers