The oldest of three children, von Neumann was born Neumann János in Budapest to Neumann Miksa (Max Neumann), a banker, and Kann Margit (Margaret Kann). Growing up in a non-practicing Jewish family, von Neumann, nicknamed "Jancsi", showed incredible memory at an early age, being able to divide eight-digit numbers in his head at the age of six. He entered the Lutheran Gymnasium in 1911. In 1913, his father purchased a title, and Neumann János acquired the German name von, becoming János von Neumann.
From 1936 to 1938Alan 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.
Von Neumann dashed all hope of developing a deterministic quantum mechanics until his work was overturned by David Bohm, J.S. Bell, and others. He held a strong belief in the role of the observer in creating the collapse of the quantum wave function.
Von Neumann devised the von Neumann architecture used in most non-parallel-processing computers. Virtually every commercially available home computer, microcomputer and supercomputer is a von Neumann machine. He created the field of cellular automata without computers, constructing the first examples of self-replicating automata with pencil and graph paper. The term von Neumann machine also refers to self-replicating machines. Von Neumann proved that the most effective way large-scale mining operations such as mining an entire moon or asteroid belt can be accomplished is through the use of self-replicating machines, to take advantage of the exponential growth of such mechanisms.
He also engaged in exploration of problems in these fields:
Von Neumann had a mind of great ingenuity and near total recall. He was an extrovert who loved drinking, dancing and having a good time. He had a fun-loving nature with a great love of jokes and humor. He died in Washington D.C.
The John von Neumann Theory Prize of the Institute for Operations Research and Management Science (INFORMS, previously TIMS-ORSA) is awarded annually to a individual (or sometimes group) who have made fundamental and sustained contributions to theory in operations research and the management sciences.
The IEEE John von Neumann Medal is awarded annually by the IEEE "for outstanding achievements in computer-related science and technology."
