John Von Neumann - Brief Comments on His Life

John Von Neumann – Brief Comments

 

I considered writing this article about several people I think left a huge mark in Computing Sciences history.   Charles Babbage, George Boole…  Also Ada Lovelace (who is known in  Brazil mostly as Ada Byron), “Analyst, Metaphysician, and Founder of Scientific Computing” (see https://www.sdsc.edu/ScienceWomen/lovelace.html , see also “The Babbage Engine – Key People at http://www.computerhistory.org/babbage/adalovelace/ ) as well as the “Top Secret Rosies” (see Rediscovering WWII’s female `computers` -  http://www.cnn.com/2011/TECH/innovation/02/08/women.rosies.math/, see also Women Computers in World War II - http://www.ieeeghn.org/wiki/index.php/Women_Computers_in_World_War_II ).  After all, I`m al old school gentleman and redeeming women’s role in the history of Computing Science is a subject that pleases me.

But I concluded that if I have to pick one person, that person must be John Von Neumann.  Von Neumann was born December 28 1903 in Budapest, Hungary, and died February 8 1957 in Washington, DC.  His life was one of those of which we can say that truly changed the word, leaving a huge legacy in an astonishingly vast range of human knowledge areas!

In Computing Science, he defined – before 1950! - the architecture computer processors use until nowadays.  But he excelled in so many areas that a book about his life (by Norman Macrae) has the title “John von Neumann – The Scientific Genius who Pioneered the Modern Computer, Game Theory, Nuclear Deterrence, and much more!”.   The author was not able to find a title encompassing all areas in which  Von Neumann’s genius excelled!  In Wikipedia, Von Neumann’s entry has in the index “Set Theory” , “Geometry”, “Measure Theory”, “Ergodic Theory”, “Operator Theory”, “Lattice Theory”, “Mathematical Formulation of Quantum Mechanics”, “Quantum Logic”, “Game Theory”, Mathematical Economics”, “Linear Programming”, “Mathematical Statistics”, “Nuclear Weapons”, “Atomic Energy Committee”, “ICBM Committee”, “Computing”, “Fluid Dynamics”, “Weather Systems” - and this is not the complete list, believe me or not!   National Science Foundation’s website (www.nsf.gov) emphasizes his Computing Science actuation, and reads: “Brilliant mathematician, synthesizer, and promoter of the ‘stored program’ concept, whose logical design of the IAS became the prototype of most of its successors – the Von Neumann Architecture”. 

(You can find a good definition of IAS at Dictionary.com - http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/IAS )

Von Neumann was born in a wealthy family – his father was a banker and had nobility titles - and soon revealed to be a child prodigy.  At age of 18, he published his first paper.  At 22 he graduated in Chemical Engineering; at 25 completed his doctoral degree in Mathematics, and gained a reputation in set theory, algebra and quantum mechanics.  At 30, he was appointed to be a Professor of Mathematics in Princeton University – a position he maintained for all his life, and became an American citizen.

In 1943 Von Neumann worked at the Manhattan Project.  His expertise in hydrodynamics and shockwaves applied to chemical explosives had already been used in England, and were then applied to the design of the atomic bomb.  From 1954 to 56 Von Neumann worked as a member of the Atomic Energy Commission and outlined the policy of nuclear deterrence in President Eisenhower’s administration.

Even while working in Manhattan Project, Von Neumann worked in his classical applied math book “Theory of Games and Economical Behavior” (co-written with Oskar Morgenstern). 

Von Neumann started to include computers among his multiple interests around 1944, and oppositely to most his peers, rather than merely applying computing to tabling data, he quickly perceived the application of computers to applied mathematics for specific problems.    And, have turned himself to computing, he – typically – decided to build his own computer.  Von Neumann’s architecture is still used on most computers.  A change starts to spread, as parallel computing became more and more available.  Von Neumann was aware of the limitations of sequential computing, but decided stay with it due to its simpler implementation features.   Modern processors are still built according to “Von Neumann’s Architecture” .

Von Neumann was a legend in Princeton, even being humbly about his capabilities.  It was said that he was able to recite, verbatim, books he have read years earlier and could edit assembly-language in his head. 

Somewhat surprisingly, he was also knows as a wit, bon-vivant, and an aggressive driver – his frequent car accidents lead to a Princeton intercession being dubbed “von Neumann corner”.

In his last years, Von Neumann approached the question of if a machine could reproduce itself, and outlined how it could using an abstract model.  Conceptually, this work anticipated modern discoveries in genetics.

 Von Neumann has been diagnosed with bone cancer in 1955 but despite his rapidly deteriorating health he continued to work, receiving the Enrico Fermi Prize in 1956.

 

Sources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_von_Neumann
http://ei.cs.vt.edu/~history/VonNeumann.html
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/632750/John-von-Neumann