What are the achievements in computer science by John von Neumann. John von Neumann short biography
John von Neumann, or Johann von Neumann, was born on December 28 1903 year in Budapest - a Hungarian-German mathematician who made important contributions to quantum physics, quantum logic, functional analysis, set theory, computer science, economics and other branches of science.
He is best known as the forefather of modern computer architecture (called von Neumann architecture), the application of operator theory to quantum mechanics (see von Neumann algebra), as well as a member of the Manhattan Project and as the creator of game theory and the concept of cellular automata.
Originally from Hungary, the son of a successful Budapest banker, von Neumann was a product of that intellectual environment. from which came such outstanding physicists as Edward Teller, Leo Szilard, Denis Gabor and Eugene Wigner. John stood out among them for his phenomenal abilities.
At the age of 6, he exchanged witticisms with his father in ancient Greek, and at 8 he mastered the basics of higher mathematics. At the age of 20-30, while teaching in Germany, he made significant contributions to the development of quantum mechanics - the cornerstone of nuclear physics, and developed game theory - a method for analyzing relationships between people, which has found wide application in various fields, from economics to military strategies.
Throughout his life, he loved to amaze friends and students with his ability to perform complex calculations in his head. He did it faster than anyone else, armed with paper, pencil and reference books. When von Neumann had to write on the board, he filled it with formulas and then erased them so quickly that one day one of his colleagues, after watching another explanation, joked: “I see. This is a proof by erasure.”
Yu. Wigner, a school friend of von Neumann and a Nobel Prize laureate, said that his mind is “a perfect instrument, the gears of which are adjusted to each other with an accuracy of thousandths of a centimeter.” This intellectual perfection was spiced with a fair amount of good-natured and very attractive eccentricity. When traveling, he sometimes thought so deeply about mathematical problems that he forgot where and why he was supposed to go, and then he had to call work for clarification.
Von Neumann was so at ease in any environment, both at work and in society, effortlessly switching from mathematical theories to components of computer technology, that some colleagues considered him a “scientist among scientists,” a kind of “new man.” , which, in fact, was what his last name meant when translated from German. Teller once jokingly said that he was “one of the few mathematicians who can stoop to the level of a physicist.” Von Neumann himself, not without humor, explained his mobility by the fact that he was from Budapest: “Only a person born in Budapest can, having entered the revolving doors after you, come out of them first.”
Von Neumann's interest in computers stems in part from his participation in the top-secret Manhattan Project to create the atomic bomb, which was developed in Los Alamos, PC. New Mexico. There, von Neumann mathematically proved the feasibility of the explosive method of detonating an atomic bomb. Now he was thinking about a much more powerful weapon - the hydrogen bomb, the creation of which required very complex calculations.
However, von Neumann understood that the computer was no more than a simple calculator, that - at least potentially - it represented a universal tool for scientific research. In July 1954 Less than a year after he joined Mauchly and Eckert's group, von Neumann prepared a 101-page report summarizing plans for the EDVAC. This report, entitled "Preliminary Report on the EDVAC Machine," was an excellent description of not only the machine itself, but also its logical properties. Military representative Goldstein, who was present at the report, copied the report and sent it to scientists in both the USA and Great Britain.
Thanks to this, von Neumann's "Preliminary Report" became the first work on digital electronic computers, which became known to a wide circle of the scientific community. The report was passed from hand to hand, from laboratory to laboratory, from university to university, from one country to another. This work attracted special attention because von Neumann was widely known in the scientific world. From that moment on, the computer was recognized as an object of scientific interest. In fact, to this day, scientists sometimes refer to a computer as a "von Neumann machine."
Readers of the Preliminary Report were inclined to believe that all the ideas it contained, particularly the crucial decision to store programs in computer memory, came from von Neumann himself. Few people knew that Mauchly and Eckert had been talking about memory programs at least six months before von Neumann joined their working group; Most people also did not know that Alan Turing, describing his hypothetical universal machine, back in 1936 g. endowed her with internal memory. In fact, von Neumann had read Turing's classic work shortly before the war.
Seeing how much fuss von Neumann and his "Preliminary Report" had caused, Mauchly and Eckert were deeply indignant. At one time, for reasons of secrecy, they were unable to publish any reports about their invention. And suddenly Goldstein, breaking secrecy, gave a platform to a man who had just joined the project. Disputes over who should own the copyright for EDVAC and ENIAC eventually led to the dissolution of the working group.
Subsequently, von Neumann worked at the Princeton Institute for Advanced Study and took part in the development of several computers of the latest design. Among them was, in particular, a machine that was used to solve problems related to the creation of a hydrogen bomb. Von Neumann wittily dubbed it "Maniac" (MANIAC, an abbreviation for Mathematical Analyzer, Numerator, Integrator and Computer - mathematical analyzer, counter, integrator and computer). Von Neumann was also a member of the Atomic Energy Commission and chairman of the US Air Force Ballistic Missile Advisory Committee.
What achievements in computer science John von Neumann made in the twentieth century, you will learn from this article.
Before talking about his achievements in computer science, it is worth talking about the scientist’s first steps on the path of science. His first work, “Towards the Introduction of Transfinite Ordinal Numbers,” was published in 1923 at the University of Szeged, where he studied. In his doctoral dissertation he developed a system of axioms. In 1925, Neumann defended his dissertation on the topic “Axiomatic construction of set theory” at the University of Budapest and received a diploma in chemical engineering from the University of Zurich. In 1927 he became a privatdozent at the University of Berlin, and two years later at the University of Hamburg. In 1931 he received a professorship at Princeton University.
John von Neumann achievements in computer science
In 1943 - 1946, the first computer (electro-computer) was built, which was named ENIAC. John von Neumann suggested to its developers how to simplify the programming of the machine by modifying it. A in the creation of the second EDVAC machine - he already took an active part in the development of an electronic automatic computer with discrete variables. He was responsible for the development of a detailed logical diagram of the machine, in which idealized computational elements were structural units. These idealized elements became a step forward in computer science, as they made it possible to separate the logical circuit from its technical implementation.
John von Neumann proposed using an electrostatic memory system instead of a delay line as memory elements. The newly created machine was named JONIAC, in honor of Neumann.
The author’s scientific works are “On the foundations of quantum mechanics”, “Mathematical justification of quantum mechanics”, “Theoretical and probabilistic construction of quantum mechanics”, “Thermodynamics of quantum mechanical systems”, “Towards the Hilbert theory of proof”, “Towards the theory of strategic games”, “On the definition through transfinite induction and related issues of general set theory”, “On one problem of consistency of axiomatic set theory”.
Besides the fact that he participated in the creation of a computer, the scientist was the first to formulate the principles of computer operation. Principles formulated by John von Neumann:
- The principle of a binary system for calculating commands and data.
- The principle of program control. A program is a set of commands executed by the processor in a certain sequence.
- The principle of memory homogeneity. All data is stored and encoded in one memory.
- The principle of memory addressability. Memory consists of numbered cells, and the processor has random access to any of them.
- The principle of sequential program control. Commands stored in memory are executed one at a time after the previous command has completed.
- The principle of conditional transition. It was formulated
Janos Lajos Neumann was born in Budapest, which at that time was a city of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He was the eldest of three sons in the family of successful Budapest banker Max Neumann (Hungarian: Neumann Miksa) and Margaret Kann (Hungarian: Kann Margit). Janos, or simply "Yancy", was an unusually gifted child. Already at the age of 6, he could divide two eight-digit numbers in his mind and talk with his father in ancient Greek. Janos was always interested in mathematics, the nature of numbers and the logic of the world around him. At the age of eight, he was already well versed in mathematical analysis. In 1911 he entered the Lutheran Gymnasium. In 1913, his father received the title of nobility, and Janos, together with the Austrian and Hungarian symbols of nobility - the prefixes von (von) to the Austrian surname and the title Margittai (Margittai) in the Hungarian naming - began to be called Janos von Neumann or Neumann Margittai Janos Lajos. While teaching in Berlin and Hamburg he was called Johann von Neumann. Later, after moving to the United States in the 1930s, his name was changed to John in English. It is curious that von Neumann's brothers received completely different surnames after moving to the USA: Vonneumann and Newman.
Von Neumann received his PhD in mathematics (with elements of experimental physics and chemistry) from the University of Budapest at age 23. At the same time, he studied chemical engineering in Zurich, Switzerland (Max von Neumann considered the profession of a mathematician insufficient to ensure a reliable future for his son). From 1926 to 1930, John von Neumann was a privatdozent in Berlin.
In 1930, von Neumann was invited to a teaching position at the American Princeton University. He was one of the first invited to work at the Institute for Advanced Study, founded in 1930, also located in Princeton, where he held a professorship from 1933 until his death.
In 1936-1938, Alan Turing defended his doctoral dissertation at the institute under the direction of Alonzo Church. This happened shortly after the publication of Turing's 1936 paper "On Computable Numbers with an Application to the Entscheidungs problem", which included the concepts of logical design and the universal machine. Von Neumann was undoubtedly familiar with Turing's ideas, but it is unknown whether he applied them to the design of the IAS machine ten years later.
In 1937, von Neumann became a full US citizen. In 1938 he was awarded the M. Bocher Prize for his work in the field of analysis.
Von Neumann was married twice. He first married Mariette Kövesi in 1930. When he proposed, he could not find a better way to express his feelings than with the help of a romantic phrase: “It would be nice for us to be together, judging by how much we both like to drink.” Von Neumann even agreed to convert to Catholicism to please her family. The marriage broke up in 1937, and already in 1938 he married Klara Dan. From his first wife, von Neumann had a daughter, Marina, a future famous economist.
In 1957, von Neumann developed bone cancer, possibly caused by radiation exposure from atomic bomb research in the Pacific, or perhaps from subsequent work at Los Alamos, New Mexico (his fellow nuclear pioneer Enrico Fermi died of bone cancer in 1954). A few months after the diagnosis, von Neumann died in great agony. The cancer also attacked his brain, leaving him virtually unable to think. As he lay dying in Walter Reed Hospital, he shocked his friends and acquaintances by asking to speak to a Catholic priest.
The Hungarian Jew John von Neumann was perhaps the last representative of a now vanishing breed of mathematicians who felt equally comfortable in pure and applied mathematics (as in other fields of science and art). He is credited with enriching or even creating entire fields of mathematical research, including mathematical logic and set theory, measure theory, operator rings (now called "von Neumann algebra"), game theory (especially his famous minimax theorem), and automata concepts. Game theory was widely used in the 1950s in economic, military, and political decision-making in the United States. Von Neumann had the greatest impact on the development of new programming methods and mechanical devices that serve as the basis of computers. Von Neumann was rightfully called the “father of the computer.”
Von Neumann's father was a successful banker who acquired the noble prefix "von" from the Hungarian government. John, born Janos, the eldest of three brothers, so unusually showed amazing aptitude for mathematics at a very early age that his primary school teachers invited university professors to give him lessons. John demonstrated an almost Mozartian ability to synthesize radically different concepts with astonishing precision and lightning speed. By the age of nineteen, he was already teaching a special course in mathematics in Berlin (where he simultaneously attended lectures by Albert Einstein). John also visited the great mathematician David Hilbert in Göttingen, whose personality and work became perhaps von Neumann's greatest source of inspiration.
After studying mechanical engineering in Zurich and teaching in Berlin and Hamburg, at age thirty, von Neumann became the youngest researcher at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. During World War II, he took part in the secret development of the atomic bomb at Los Alamos. After the war he served on the Atomic Energy Commission. He died in 1957 from cancer.
Frustrated by the computers available to the developers of the Manhattan Project atomic bomb at Los Alamos, von Neumann studied the machines and developed new methods of calculation. He came up with special codes that launched a system of connections to obtain answers to many questions. This device and the programming it developed serve as the models on which modern computing machines are based.
Unlike Szilard and Bohr, who sought ways to control the proliferation of nuclear weapons, the ardent anti-communist von Neumann contributed to the justification of the American arms race during the Eisenhower administration. Even as he resisted Senator Joseph McCarthy's attacks (which reminded him of fascist persecution) against Robert Oppenheimer and other scientists, von Neumann spent his last years actively helping the defense establishment, applying his game theory and astonishing mathematical skills to the development of more lethal schemes of military strategy.
In the mid-1940s, there were several possible paths for creating electronic computers. Harvard's architecture cannot be discounted; it is more difficult to implement than von Neumann, but can provide significantly higher performance, so it has been preserved in embedded processors, where signal processing speed is most critical. But fate decreed that von Neumann's architecture was unambiguously and unconditionally accepted on a large scale. It postulated three basic principles.
- Software control. A program consists of a sequence of machine instructions fetched from memory using a program counter. A counter is a regular register; it either automatically increases by one upon completion of the current command, or its state changes forcibly when executing conditional or unconditional jump commands.
- Homogeneity of memory. Both programs and data are stored in shared memory; You can perform the same actions on command codes as on data codes. Consequently, the program can be modified during execution, for example, the execution of loops and subroutines can be controlled; a program can be the result of the action of another program, compilation methods are based on this.
- Addressing. Memory consists of renumbered cells, and any cell is available to the processor at any time.
These provisions have an extremely important consequence: hardware is an immutable part of a computer, and programs are a variable part.
Modern software and hardware, with very few exceptions, are derived from this choice. But von Neumann architecture, like everything in this world, is not eternal; unnoticed by most, its moral aging occurs. Criticism of this architecture and its inevitable rejection over time should not be seen as criticism of von Neumann himself — rather, fair criticism can be directed at those who have dogmatized his views for decades.
Anecdotes and facts from the biography of John von Neumann.
- Neumann had an almost absolute memory, so that after many years he could retell the pages of books he had once read, immediately translating the text into English or German, and with slight delays into French or Italian.
- When Neumann spoke at the blackboard, he very quickly covered its entire surface with various formulas, and then very quickly erased everything, so that not everyone had time to understand the course of his reasoning. One day, one of his colleagues, watching Neumann’s manipulations at the blackboard, joked: “Everything is clear, this is a proof by erasing from the blackboard.”
- Back in 1928, Neumann wrote an article “Toward the Theory of Strategic Games.” In it, he proved the famous minimax theorem, which served as one of the foundations of the later game theory. This article resulted from a study of two players playing poker and a discussion of the optimal strategy for each player. However, this work did little to help Neumann himself when playing poker. So in 1944, in Los Alamos, he lost 10 dollars to N. Metropolis immediately after explaining this theory to him. Having received the winnings, Metropolis bought the book “Game Theory and Economic Behavior” by Neumann and Morgenstern for $5, stuck another $5 on it and forced the author to sign the history of this loss on the book.
- In 1936, S. Ulam asked Neumann how he viewed the situation in Europe and assessed the role of France. Neumann prophetically replied: “What are you talking about, France will not matter at all!”
- It is said that while working on the hydrogen bomb, von Neumann and S. Ulam developed a method of independent statistical testing, now known as the Monte Carlo method. One of the main difficulties in developing this method was the lack of random number generators at that time. Then Neumann suggested using one of the roulettes in the Monte Carlo casino to generate sequences of random numbers, where there were the best roulettes, and therefore the best sequences of random numbers were generated. The military department agreed to rent one of these devices, Ulam and Neumann played a lot of roulette at government expense, and in memory of this they called their method the Monte Carlo method.
- When Neumann invited Ulam to participate in the atomic project, he was somewhat doubtful and said that he did not understand anything about technology, that he did not even know how a toilet cistern worked, although he had no doubt that some hydrodynamic processes were taking place there. Neumann laughed and said he didn't know that either.
- Neumann could not imagine that mathematics could seem difficult to anyone: “If people do not think that mathematics is simple, it is only because they do not understand how complex life really is.”
- Discussing the complex problem of generating random numbers, Neumann said: “The person who considers arithmetical methods for generating random numbers is, of course, in a sinful state.”
- They wrote about Neumann that he could go to bed with an unsolved problem, and wake up at three in the morning with a ready answer. After which he went to the phone and called his employees. Therefore, one of Neumann's requirements for his employees was the willingness to be woken up in the middle of the night.
- Neumann was known as an unsurpassed connoisseur and teller of jokes and often inserted them into even the most serious and important speeches.
- While traveling in a car, Neumann could get so carried away behind the wheel by solving some problem that he lost orientation in space and needed clarification. His wife said that he could call and ask, for example, the following: “I got to New Brunswick, apparently I’m going to New York, but I forgot where and why.”
- Neiman did not go to theaters, but fell asleep at the cinema with his wife immediately after reading a newsreel, with the first frames of the film. When she reproachfully woke him up before the end of the film, he, in his defense, came up with plots for the pictures that were often more exciting than those he saw, but had nothing in common with them.
- It should be noted that Neumann was accustomed to a wealthy life from childhood, and therefore loved to repeat the words of one of his uncles: “It’s not enough to be rich, you also need to have money in Switzerland.”
- It is known that Neumann was a workaholic; he began to work even before breakfast. Often during dinner parties, he would leave the guests for a while to write down the thoughts that came to mind.
- Teller once jokingly said about Neumann that he was one of the few mathematicians who could stoop to the level of a physicist.
- Neumann explained his energy and efficiency this way: “Only a person born in Budapest can, having entered the revolving doors after you, come out first.”
- Once, while working on the atomic project at Los Alamos, it was necessary to make some very complex calculations. Enrico Fermi, Richard Feynman and John von Neumann took up the matter. Fermi took his favorite slide rule, a pencil and a bunch of sheets of paper. Feynman consulted various reference books, turned on an electric calculator (the fastest that existed at that time) and delved into calculations. Neumann counted in his head. They received results that were almost identical at the same time.
- The famous Hungarian mathematician L. Fejer (1880-1959) called Neumann “the most famous Janos in the entire history of the country.”
- John Von Neumann can be considered the founder and father of all viruses. It was he who came up with the theory of self-reproducing mechanisms and first described the method of creating such a mechanism.
UNUSUAL ABILITIES
As already mentioned, John von Neumann had extraordinary abilities. He remembered the contents of fiction or popular science books he had once read by heart. He could quote any page of this collection. Thanks to his absolute memory, the scientist spoke fluent German, English, French, Italian, and Spanish. He spoke Greek and Latin. For example, having read “World History” in 44 volumes, John von Neumann many years later could
His ability to perform complex mathematical calculations in his head was amazing. One day, at the nuclear weapons research center in Los Alamos (USA), scientists urgently needed to calculate some process. Three people took on this work - John von Neumann and equally eminent physicists Richard Feynman and Enrico Fermi. Richard Feynman used the fastest electric calculator at the time, Enrico Fermi used a slide rule, and John von Neumann did the math in his head. All three finished their calculations at the same time!
Of course, John von Neumann was not the only person in history with such phenomenal abilities. From time to time, unique people appear that surprise “mere mortals” with their capabilities. However, many of them did not progress beyond performing in the circus for the amusement of the public. John von Neumann is a rare exception. His abilities served the cause of science. The scientist’s first published work was written jointly with Fekete, an employee of the University of Budapest; it was called “On the location of the zeros of some minimal polynomials.” Von Neumann was only 18 years old at the time. Another of the extraordinary abilities of the outstanding scientist was also the gift of finding practical applications for abstract mathematical theories. If it were not for this gift, humanity would much later begin to use computers, manage the economy, and the United States would have nuclear weapons.
John von Neumann(English) John von Neumann; or Johann von Neumann, German Johann von Neumann; at birth Janos Lajos Neumann, Hung. Neumann János Lajos, IPA: ; December 28, 1903, Budapest - February 8, 1957, Washington) - Hungarian-American mathematician of Jewish origin who made important contributions to quantum physics, quantum logic, functional analysis, set theory, computer science, economics and other branches of science.
He is best known as the person whose name is (controversially) associated with the architecture of most modern computers (the so-called von Neumann architecture), the application of operator theory to quantum mechanics (von Neumann algebra), as well as as a participant in the Manhattan Project and as the creator of game theory and the concept of cellular machine guns
Janos Lajos Neumann was the eldest of three sons in a wealthy Jewish family in Budapest, which at that time was the second capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. His father, Max Neumann(Hungarian Neumann Miksa, 1870-1929), moved to Budapest from the provincial town of Pecs in the late 1880s, received a doctorate in law and worked as a lawyer in a bank; his whole family came from Serenc. Mother, Margaret Kann(Hungarian Kann Margit, 1880-1956), was a housewife and the eldest daughter (in her second marriage) of the successful businessman Jacob Kann, a partner in the Kann-Heller company, specializing in the sale of millstones and other agricultural equipment. Her mother, Catalina Meisels (the scientist's grandmother), came from Munkács.
Janos, or simply Janczy, was an unusually gifted child. Already at the age of 6, he could divide two eight-digit numbers in his mind and talk with his father in ancient Greek. Janos was always interested in mathematics, the nature of numbers and the logic of the world around him. At the age of eight, he was already well versed in mathematical analysis. In 1911 he entered the Lutheran gymnasium. In 1913, his father received the title of nobility, and Janos, along with the Austrian and Hungarian symbols of nobility - the prefix background (von) to an Austrian surname and title Margittai (Margittai) in Hungarian naming - began to be called Janos von Neumann or Neumann Margittai Janos Lajos. While teaching in Berlin and Hamburg he was called Johann von Neumann. Later, after moving to the United States in the 1930s, his name was changed to John in English. It is curious that after moving to the USA, his brothers received completely different surnames: Vonneumann And Newman. The first, as you can see, is a “fusion” of the surname and the prefix “von”, while the second is a literal translation of the surname from German into English.
Von Neumann received his PhD in mathematics (with elements of experimental physics and chemistry) from the University of Budapest at age 23. At the same time, he studied chemical engineering in Zurich, Switzerland (Max von Neumann considered the profession of a mathematician insufficient to ensure a reliable future for his son). From 1926 to 1930, John von Neumann was a privatdozent in Berlin.
In 1930, von Neumann was invited to a teaching position at the American Princeton University. He was one of the first invited to work at the research Institute for Advanced Study, founded in 1930, also located in Princeton, where he held a professorship from 1933 until his death.
In 1936-1938, Alan Turing defended his doctoral dissertation at the institute under the direction of Alonzo Church. This happened shortly after the publication in 1936 of Turing's paper "On computable numbers as applied to the problem of decidability" (eng. On Computable Numbers with an Application to the Entscheidungs problem), which included the concepts of logical design and the universal machine. Von Neumann was undoubtedly familiar with Turing's ideas, but it is unknown whether he applied them to the design of the IAS machine ten years later.
In 1937, von Neumann became a US citizen. In 1938 he was awarded the M. Bocher Prize for his work in the field of analysis.
The first successful numerical weather forecast was made in 1950 using the ENIAC computer by a team of American meteorologists together with John von Neumann.
In October 1954, von Neumann was appointed to the Atomic Energy Commission, which had as its main concern the accumulation and development of nuclear weapons. It was confirmed by the United States Senate on March 15, 1955. In May, he and his wife moved to the Washington, D.C., suburb of Georgetown. During the last years of his life, von Neumann was the chief adviser on atomic energy, atomic weapons and intercontinental ballistic weapons. Perhaps as a consequence of his origins or early experiences in Hungary, von Neumann was strongly right-wing in his political views. An article in Life magazine published on February 25, 1957, shortly after his death, portrayed him as an advocate of preventive war with the Soviet Union.
In the summer of 1954, von Neumann bruised his left shoulder in a fall. The pain did not go away, and surgeons diagnosed: bone cancer. It has been suggested that von Neumann's cancer may have been caused by radiation exposure from an atomic bomb test in the Pacific, or perhaps from subsequent work at Los Alamos, New Mexico (his colleague, nuclear research pioneer Enrico Fermi, died of stomach cancer at 54 years old). The disease progressed, and attending AEC (Atomic Energy Commission) meetings three times a week required enormous effort. A few months after the diagnosis, von Neumann died in great agony. As he lay dying in Walter Reed Hospital, he asked to see a Catholic priest. A number of the scientist’s acquaintances believe that since he was an agnostic for most of his adult life, this desire did not reflect his real views, but was caused by suffering from illness and fear of death.
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