von neumann, john
(foldoc) | 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)
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