John von Neumann
    n 1: United States mathematician who contributed to the
         development of atom bombs and of stored-program digital
         computers (1903-1957) [syn: von Neumann, Neumann, John
         von Neumann]

John von Neumann
von Neumann, John

    /jon von noy'mahn/ Born 1903-12-28, died 1957-02-08.

   A Hungarian-born mathematician who did pioneering work in
   quantum physics, game theory, and computer science.  He
   contributed to the USA's Manhattan Project that built the
   first atomic bomb.

   von Neumann was invited to Princeton University in 1930, and
   was a mathematics professor at the Institute for Advanced
   Studies from its formation in 1933 until his death.

   From 1936 to 1938 Alan Turing was a visitor at the Institute
   and completed a Ph.D. dissertation under von Neumann's
   supervision.  This visit occurred shortly after Turing's
   publication of his 1934 paper "On Computable Numbers with an
   Application to the Entscheidungs-problem" which involved the
   concepts of logical design and the universal machine.  von
   Neumann must have known of Turing's ideas but it is not clear
   whether he applied them to the design of the IAS Machine ten
   years later.

   While serving on the BRL Scientific Advisory Committee, von
   Neumann joined the developers of ENIAC and made some
   critical contributions.  In 1947, while working on the design
   for the successor machine, EDVAC, von Neumann realized that
   ENIAC's lack of a centralized control unit could be overcome
   to obtain a rudimentary stored program computer.  He also
   proposed the fetch-execute cycle.  His ideas led to what is
   now often called the von Neumann architecture.

   <http://sis.pitt.edu/~mbsclass/is2000/hall_of_fame/vonneuma.htm>.

   <http://ei.cs.vt.edu/~history/VonNeumann.html>.

   <http://ftp.arl.mil/~mike/comphist/54nord/>.

   (2004-01-14)