Neumann, John von

1995/08/02 Azkune Mendia, Iñaki - Elhuyar Fundazioa | Kaltzada, Pili - Elhuyar Zientziaren Komunikazioa

• Biografiak

(1903-1957)

American Hungarian mathematician founded in 1903 in Budapest. He left Hungary after World War I, arriving in Switzerland in 1919. There he studied in higher education and graduated in technical engineering at the Technical School of Zurich. He studied at several European universities: Between 1926 and 1929 in Berlin, in 1930 in Hamburg and that same year at the University of Gottingen where he studied with Oppenheimer.

In 1930 it was consolidated in the United States. He was professor of Physics and Mathematics at the University of Princenton, where he did his most interesting work, always closely related to the University and his colleagues.

He first dealt with mathematics and quantum mechanics. Schrödinger defined that Heisenberg's ondulatory mechanics and matrix mechanics were mathematically equivalent in 1944. That same year he published, together with economist Oskar Morgenster, the work entitled The Theory of Games and Economic Behavior on the theory of games, whose study began in 1928. Neumann noted that the rules of the game can be used to analyze and/or predict multiple processes, such as understanding the development of simple games, designing economic structures, or predicting the behavior of enemies during the war.

Neumann thought that the same mathematics was a game. He used mathematical teachings to play. To be able to focus all of them, he worked on the theoretical structure of the automatic information processing machine. Based on Neumann's theoretical model, he tried to create giant computers that performed mathematical operations very quickly. The use of computers facilitated, among other things, the production of the hydrogen pump.

In 1955 he was elected a member of the Atomic Energy Committee and, a year later, he was awarded the Fermi Prize, in recognition of his work during his career.

To this tribute came last Thursday. He died in 1957 in Washington.