- Person
- John von Neumann
- Lived
- 1903–1957
- Field
- Mathematics & computing
- From
- Hungarian-American
The story
John von Neumann saw early that the new electronic computers could tackle one of the oldest problems in science: predicting the weather. The atmosphere is a fluid governed by known physical laws, but solving the equations by hand was impossibly slow. He also noticed that the problems resembled the fluid calculations he had worked on during the Manhattan Project.
In 1946 he founded the Meteorological Project at the Institute for Advanced Study, securing funding from the Weather Bureau and the weather services of the US Air Force and Navy. With Carl-Gustaf Rossby, then the leading theoretical meteorologist, he gathered about twenty meteorologists, but at first little was accomplished because his other work left him too little time to lead it.
That changed when the young meteorologist Jule Charney took up its leadership. By 1950 von Neumann and Charney had written what Wikipedia describes as the world's first climate modelling software, and used the ENIAC computer, whose use von Neumann had arranged, to make the first numerical weather forecasts. The team published the results as Numerical Integration of the Barotropic Vorticity Equation. The forecasts were primitive, but news of them spread quickly and inspired parallel projects around the world.
In 1955 von Neumann, Charney and their collaborators persuaded their funders to open the Joint Numerical Weather Prediction Unit in Suitland, Maryland, which began routine, real-time computer weather forecasting. Von Neumann then organised a conference at Princeton on modelling the general circulation of the atmosphere, which led to a research section that later became the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory. He continued to work on the technical problems of modelling and to make sure the projects kept their funding.
Von Neumann and Charney also played a leading role in efforts to bring the exchange of energy and moisture between sea and air into the study of climate.
Why it matters
Every weather forecast on a phone or television descends from the computer prediction von Neumann championed, and the storm warnings it makes possible save lives.
About John von Neumann
Budapest-born mathematician whose 1945 EDVAC report set out the stored-program design behind almost every computer, and who helped found game theory and modern quantum mechanics.
More about John von Neumann
- Von Neumann warned of CO2 warming in 1955In 1955 John von Neumann noted that carbon dioxide from burning coal and oil might already have changed the atmosphere enough to cause general warming.
- Von Neumann's ergodic theorem earned 'immortality'John von Neumann's 1932 papers on ergodic theory were so important that Paul Halmos said they alone would have guaranteed him mathematical immortality.
- John von Neumann founded game theoryJohn von Neumann proved the minimax theorem in 1928 and, with Oskar Morgenstern, published Theory of Games and Economic Behavior in 1944, founding game theory.
- Von Neumann's IAS computer was copied worldwideThe IAS machine John von Neumann built in Princeton from 1946 became the blueprint for early computers worldwide, and its design shaped IBM's first scientific computers.
- John von Neumann invented merge sort in 1945In 1945 John von Neumann invented merge sort, one of the most widely used methods for putting data in order, in what Donald Knuth called his first computer program.
- Von Neumann helped create the Monte Carlo methodWith Stanislaw Ulam, John von Neumann helped develop the Monte Carlo method, using random numbers on computers to solve problems too complex for direct calculation.
- Von Neumann gave quantum mechanics its mathematicsIn his 1932 book Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Mechanics, John von Neumann set out the first rigorous mathematical framework for quantum theory.
- Von Neumann designed a machine that copies itselfIn the late 1940s John von Neumann designed a self-reproducing 'universal constructor' and, with Stanislaw Ulam, created the field of cellular automata.
- John von Neumann wrote the blueprint for modern computersJohn von Neumann's 1945 report on the EDVAC gave the first published description of the stored-program computer, the design behind almost every computer since.
Sources
- John von Neumann Wikipedia
Another act of tikkun olam. This is part of tikkun olam, the Jewish idea of repairing the world, and every one of us can add to it.