John von Neumann
1903–1957, Budapest, Austria-Hungary (now Hungary), Washington, D.C., United States
Hungarian-American polymath who placed quantum mechanics on a rigorous Hilbert-space footing, founded operator-algebra theory and mathematical game theory, and articulated the stored-program computer architecture.
Born János Neumann in Budapest, von Neumann earned a diploma in chemical engineering from ETH Zurich and a doctorate in mathematics from the University of Budapest in 1926, with a thesis on axiomatic set theory that introduced the modern definition of ordinal numbers. After lecturing in Berlin and Hamburg and studying under Hilbert at Göttingen, he moved to Princeton in 1930 and in 1933 became one of the six founding mathematics professors of the Institute for Advanced Study.
His 1932 monograph 'Mathematische Grundlagen der Quantenmechanik' gave quantum mechanics its standard mathematical formulation in terms of linear operators on Hilbert space, and his subsequent papers with Francis Murray created the theory of rings of operators — now called von Neumann algebras. He also proved the mean ergodic theorem in 1932, helping launch modern ergodic theory.
Von Neumann proved the minimax theorem for two-person zero-sum games in 1928 and, with Oskar Morgenstern, published 'Theory of Games and Economic Behavior' in 1944, founding mathematical game theory. During and after the Second World War he worked on hydrodynamics, shock waves, and the Manhattan Project, and his 1945 'First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC' described the stored-program digital computer architecture still named after him.
Workplaces: Princeton University, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton
Hungary, United States