John von Neumann, who was born in Budapest, Hungary in 1903, was primarily a mathematician but made important contributions to an unusually great number of fields of inquiry, including computer science, quantum physics and economics.

Von Neumann was trained in Europe but emigrated to the United States in 1930 to join the faculty at Princeton University. Three years later he moved to the Institute of Advanced Studies at Princeton. During World War II, he became involved as a consultant with several government projects during the second world war, proving his ability not only as a scientist but as an administrator. Most notably, he acted as consultant in the development of the atomic bomb at the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory and was a principal player in the development of high-speed digital computers and the stored programs used in virtually all contemporary computer applications.

Von Neumann was primarily interested in pure mathematics...