Skip to main content

Computer Science Legacy

By



John von Neumann is probably best well known by laymen for his contributions to computer science. His interest in computers most strongly began while he was working for the military in WWII. He was attempting to solve problems of hydrodynamics related to his weapons research (Gillispie). The complexity of these problems, and later the new problems presented by nuclear energy, led von Neumann to the field of computing.

In 1944, von Neumann began working on ENIAC, or Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer, which was being developed at the University of Pennsylvania.  It was von Neumann who, with his crucial contributions, that made ENIAC not just a calculator, but a primitive stored program computer (Kovács). The most important concept of which is storing program instructions in memory just as is done with data. The first test runs of the computer were used to run computations for the hydrogen bomb (Goldstine). In 1946 ENIAC was handed over to the US government.

After ENIAC, von Neumann consulted for the U Penn EDVAC program (Electronic Discrete Variable Automatic Computer) and wrote the first draft of a paper on EDVAC. This computer too used his idea of stored programs, but in this case the instructions were stored using the same memory as data. This computer architecture has become well known as "von Neumann architecture." It includes an arithmetic unit, control unit, and memory. In reality, other scientists also worked on this concept, however their names are not included due to leaving U Penn to start their own company (O'Regan).

Von Neumann established and invented many things that are crucial parts of today's field computation. For instance, he invented the modern Monte Carlo method which was used in simulations of the Manhattan Project. He created the merge sort algorithm of recursively dividing a set and then sorting the parts upon merging them back together. He also began the field of cellular automata which regards grids of cells with various states and how they change over time according to a set of rules (O'Regan). This concept led to his design of self-replicating programs which is considered the first computer virus (Filiol).

Since 1990, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) has been annually awarding the IEEE John von Neumann Medal "for outstanding achievements in computer-related science and technology (IEEE)." This award is representative of  von Neumann's legacy that forever changed the history of computers.


Filiol, Éric (2005). Computer viruses: from theory to applications, Volume 1. New York: Springer.

Gillispie, C. C., Holmes, F. L., & Koertge, N. (2007). Complete dictionary of scientific biography [electronic resource]. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.

Goldstine, H. H. (1993). The computer, from Pascal to von Neumann. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.

IEEE. IEEE John von Neumann medal. Retrieved from https://www.ieee.org/about/awards/medals/vonneumann.html.

Kovács, G. (2004). John von Neumann – a biographical sketch. Acta Oeconomica, 54(1), 85-89. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/90002529

O'Regan, G. (2013). Giants of computing: a compendium of select, pivotal pioneers. London: Springer.

Comments

  1. Doug WardDecember 10, 2017 at 5:44 PM

    It's hard to think of a 20th century mathematician more influential than Von Neumann.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Physics, War and Politics

By
Although not a trained physicist, John von Neumann contributed to quantum mechanics by describing it in an elegant way, more attractive than Heisenberg's method (Rédei 2001). His success in the field, and other fields, was his ability to immerse himself in the fields rather than simply approach it from a mathematical standpoint. "[T]he war introduced me to great parts of mathematical physics and applied mathematics which I had neglected before, and I feel that I received intellectually a good deal more than I gave." -John von Neumann in a letter to the Commissioner of the US Atomic Energy Commission (Rédei 2005) Commissioner of the US Atomic Energy Commission. APA (American Psychological Assoc.) Hargittai, B., & Hargittai, I. (2016). Wisdom Of The Martians Of Science: In Their Own Words With Commentaries. Singapore: World Scientific. MLA (Modern Language Assoc.) Hargittai, Balazs and István Hargittai. Wisdom of the Martians of Science: In Thei...
1 comment
Read more

The Martian

By
John von Neumann was born in Budapest in 1903. Von Neumann was gifted with talents in math and science from an early age and achieved a PhD in mathematics at age 22 with other studies in chemistry and physics and electrical engineering. He soon started teaching at the University of Berlin and within four years had published 12 papers. With Europe on the brink of WWII, in 1937 von Neumann became a citizen of the United States and attempted to become a lieutenant in the Army under the ordinance department. Fortunately for history, he was denied due to his age. As the US became involved in the war, von Neumann became one of their foremost scientists involved in explosives. He was involved with shaped charges for torpedoes and antitank weapons and eventually joined the Manhattan Project. There is an old anecdote about someone at the Manhattan Project suggesting the impressive Hungarian scientists there had come from Mars and disguised themselves by speaking Hungarian. Von ...
1 comment
Read more