Dictionary of Computers - Von Neumann, John

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Hungarian-born US scientist and mathematician, a pioneer of computer design. He invented his ‘rings of operators’ (called Von Neumann algebras) in the late 1930s, and also contributed to set theory, game theory, quantum mechanics, cybernetics (with his theory of self-reproducing automata, called Von Neumann machines), and the development of the atomic and hydrogen bombs.

He designed and supervised the construction of the first computer able to use a flexible stored program (named EDVAC) at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton 1940–1952. This work laid the foundations for the design of all subsequent programmable computers.

Von Neumann was born in Budapest and studied in Germany and Switzerland. In 1930 he emigrated to the USA, where he became professor at Princeton in 1931, and a member of Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study from 1933. He also held a number of advisory posts with the US government 1940–54. Von Neumann's book The Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Mechanics (1932) defended mathematically the uncertainty principle of German physicist Werner Heisenberg. In 1944, Von Neumann showed that matrix mechanics and wave mechanics were equivalent. The monumental Theory of Games and Economic Behavior (1944), written with Oskar Morgenstern (1902–1977), laid the foundations for modern game theory.

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