- Person
- John von Neumann
- Lived
- 1903–1957
- Field
- Mathematics & computing
- From
- Hungarian-American
The story
In lectures in 1948 and 1949, including talks at the University of Illinois, John von Neumann asked a startling question: what would it take for a machine to build a copy of itself? He wanted to know how complex a machine must be before it could reproduce and, like living things under natural selection, grow more complex over time. Working with Stanislaw Ulam, who had been studying crystal growth on a simple lattice, he developed a mathematical model, a grid of cells each following simple rules, now called a cellular automaton.
Within it, working without the help of a computer, he designed an elaborate configuration in a grid whose cells could each be in one of 29 states. It could read a coded tape of instructions, build a copy of itself, and copy the tape into the new machine. His analysis showed that self-reproduction requires a stored description that is both executed as instructions and copied as data. This logic anticipated the way DNA works before its structure was discovered in 1953. It also showed how changes in the copied description, like mutations, could allow such machines to evolve.
The design was fleshed out in his posthumous book Theory of Self-Reproducing Automata, completed by Arthur Burks and published in 1966. The Nobel laureate Sydney Brenner considered this work, together with Alan Turing's work on computing machines, central to biological theory.
Ulam and von Neumann are generally credited with founding the field of cellular automata. Interest spread far beyond academia in the 1970s with John Conway's Game of Life, and in the 1980s Stephen Wolfram carried out systematic studies of simple one-dimensional automata. Cellular automata are now used in physics, theoretical biology and the modelling of the microstructure of materials.
The universal constructor is also regarded as a foundation of automata theory, complex systems research and artificial life.
Why it matters
Von Neumann's work founded artificial life research and still guides thinking about biology, computing and self-replicating systems.
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.
- Von Neumann launched computer weather forecastingIn 1950 John von Neumann and Jule Charney used ENIAC to make the first numerical weather forecasts; in 1955 routine computer forecasting began in the US.
- 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.
- 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
- Von Neumann universal constructor Wikipedia
- Cellular automaton Wikipedia
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