- 1903-1957. Hungarian-American mathematician and polymath.
- Co-founded game theory with the minimax theorem and “Theory of Games and Economic Behavior.”
- Designed the von Neumann architecture: stored-program computation with shared memory for code and data.
- Made foundational contributions to quantum mechanics (mathematical formalization, measurement theory).
- Pioneered cellular automata and the theory of self-replicating machines, precursors to artificial life.
- Contributed to the Manhattan Project, Monte Carlo methods, and numerical weather prediction.
- His architecture remains the dominant paradigm for digital computers.