John von Neumann was born on December 28, 1903 in Budapest, Hungary, and died on February 8, 1957 in Washington, D.C. According to the MacTutor archive, he was one of the leading mathematicians of the twentieth century and a pioneer of computer science, making early contributions across pure mathematics, physics, and the design of computing machines.
His work in mathematics ranged widely. MacTutor records that he established a solid mathematical framework for the new quantum mechanics in his 1932 text, introduced the operator algebras now called von Neumann algebras, and proved the minimax theorem at the heart of game theory, which he developed into the 1944 book Theory of Games and Economic Behaviour with Oskar Morgenstern.
In computing, von Neumann advocated for the bit as the unit of memory and helped advance the theory of cellular automata and self-reproducing machines. His most influential single document was the 1945 “First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC,” which described a computer that stores its instructions in the same memory as its data, the design now known as the von Neumann architecture.
He also took part in the wartime atomic program and in shock wave and hydrodynamics research. Through the EDVAC report and his later machine work at the Institute for Advanced Study, his name became attached to the basic layout of nearly every general-purpose computer built since.