1903-1957. Hungarian-born US scientist and
mathematician, known for his pioneering work
on computer design. He invented his
celebrated `rings of operators' (called Von
Neumann algebras) in the late 1930s, and also
contributed to set theory, games theory,
cybernetics (with his theory of
self-reproducing automata, called Von Neumann
machines), and the development of the atomic
and hydrogen bombs. He was born in Budapest
and became an assistant professor of physical
mathematics at Berlin University before
moving to Princeton, USA, 1929, where he
later became professor of mathematics. In the
early 1940s he described a design for a
stored-program computer.