John von Neumann
| John von Neumann | |
| Born | December 28, 1903 |
|---|---|
| Died | February 8, 1957 |
| Residence | deceased |
| Nationality | Hungarian, American |
| Institutions | University of Göttingen, University of Berlin, University of Hamburg, Princeton University, Institute for Advanced Study, Los Alamos Laboratory |
| Alma mater | Pázmány Péter University, University of Berlin, ETH Zürich |
John von Neumann was a mathematician, physicist, computer scientist and engineer. In the 1940s, his interest in self-replicating natural processes in the physical universe led von Neumann, in collaboration with Stanislaw Ulam, to consider self-replicating machines. In 1952 he developed the concept of cellular automata. With pencil and graph paper, he constructed the first self-replicating 2-Dimensional automaton. In the process, he invented the von Neumann neighbourhood, in which each cell in a two-dimensional grid has its orthogonally adjacent cells as neighbors.
The concept of the Von Neumann universal constructor, based on the von Neumann cellular automaton, was described in a series of his lectures which were published posthumously in Theory of Self Reproducing Automata.
External links
- John von Neumann at Wikipedia
- Theory of Self Reproducing Automata. Edited by Arthur W. Burks. English edition (1966). University of Illinois Press.
- John (Janos) von Neumann at the Mathematics Genealogy Project