- Person
- John von Neumann
- Lived
- 1903–1957
- Field
- Mathematics & computing
- From
- Hungarian-American
The story
John von Neumann was born in Budapest in 1903 to a wealthy, non-observant Jewish family. He had perhaps the widest range of any mathematician of his time, helping to build the mathematical framework of quantum physics and pioneering game theory as well as working in computing, economics and statistics.
The earliest computers stored their programs separately from their data, on paper tape or plugboards, so changing a program was slow and laborious. In 1945, while consulting for the team at the University of Pennsylvania's Moore School that had built the ENIAC, he wrote the First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC, distributed on 30 June 1945. He wrote it by hand while travelling by train to Los Alamos, and Herman Goldstine had it typed and copied.
The 101-page report contained the first published description of the logical design of a computer using the stored-program concept, in which the program and data share the same memory. It laid out a central arithmetic unit, a control unit, memory, and input and output, and it called for binary numbers and vacuum tubes. The design became known as the von Neumann architecture, although the name is disputed because the report did not credit the engineers John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert, whose work it drew on.
Interest in the report sent it around the world. Maurice Wilkes of Cambridge University said his excitement on reading it led him to travel to the United States for the Moore School Lectures in 1946, and Britain's EDSAC was among the early computers it inspired.
Von Neumann then led the computer project at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. Its plans were widely distributed to schools and businesses interested in computing, leading to derivative machines from Los Alamos to Sydney, Stockholm, Tokyo and the Weizmann Institute in Israel. He also invented the merge sort algorithm in 1945. The architecture he described became the basis of most modern digital computers.
Why it matters
The stored-program design described in von Neumann's report, and the openly shared plans that followed, set the pattern for the computers that now run the modern world.
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.
- 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.
Sources
- First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC Wikipedia
- IAS machine Wikipedia
- John von Neumann Wikipedia
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