[sirgawain33]

Interesting, but plenty of examples of just the opposite.

"Von Neumann ... received complaints for regularly playing extremely loud German marching music on his gramophone, which distracted those in neighbouring offices, including Einstein, from their work. Von Neumann did some of his best work blazingly fast in noisy, chaotic environments, and once admonished his wife for preparing a quiet study for him to work in. He never used it, preferring the couple's living room with its TV playing loudly."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_von_Neumann

[anaphor]

He also got very little sleep apparently (This is according to Turing's Cathedral by George Dyson), which we also know to cause a drop in productivity/thinking skills for most people.

[paulhodge]

I'd believe that noise universally causes more stress, but that doesn't mean that more noise is always bad. An interesting thing about stress is that we're most productive with some stress; not too much or too little. (Sorry I don't have a citation for that). So it could be that Von Neumann used that noise to reach the sweet spot of stress.