Biography of John von Neumann

Abstract

Von Neumann, John (Dec. 28, 1903–Feb. 8,1957), mathematician, theoretical physicist, and economist, was born in Budapest, Hungary, the son of Max von Neumann, a well-to-do banker, and Margaret Kann. While he was attending the Lutheran High School in Budapest, his mathematics teacher, L. Ratz, recognized von Neumann’s abilities, provided books for him to read, and tutored him privately. However, because of the scarcity of positions for mathematicians in Hungary, it was decided that he should study chemistry. After attending the University of Berlin (1921–1923), he received the Ph.D. in chemistry at the Technische Hochschule in Zurich in 1926. That year he was also granted the Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Budapest. Von Neumann was a Rockefeller fellow at the University of Göttingen (1925–1926) and then taught mathematics at the University of Berlin (1927–1929) and at the University of Hamburg (1929). His associations at Göttingen with Max Born, Lothar Nordheim, and David Hilbert stimulated his interest in quantum mechanics as well as mathematical logic. The former interest led him to provide a mathematically rigorous formulation of the foundations of quantum mechanics and also to one of his most important mathematical contributions, the spectral theory of unbounded self-adjoint operators in Hilbert space. His work in mathematical logic, although of great significance and ingenuity, was largely superseded by the contributions of Kurt Gödel. Nevertheless his abiding interest in the subject greatly influenced his thinking in other areas, including computer theory.