I’m not sure he’s “underrated”, almost everything I’ve heard about him describes him as one of the most intelligent people to have ever lived. I have seen more than one article proposing cloning his DNA as the best way to save humanity
I mean, underrated in popular culture compared to Einstein, let's say.
But, I've just learnt an anecdote about Neumann, Einstein and Godel.
When Neumann signed for Princeton, he had two conditions: a 16k annual salary (others earned ~2k at that time) and to bring in that two people who are smarter than he.
UPDATE: The talk is about miracles and geniuses. According to the speaker, a genius is somebody who sees something which wasn’t in the air, up until that time. Neumann wasn’t a genius, rather a polymath who saw all what was in the air at that time
"How is it that Hungary produced so many geniuses in the early 20th century?" Wigner said. "I don't understand the question. There was only one genius: John von Neumann."
You are probably making a comment on diversity, but men's DNA encodes everything needed for a women simply by duplicating the X chromosome. Of course, more likelihood of genetic defects due to a single copy of an X as men are.
