"The Jewish genius mathematician John von Neumann is the mastermind behind today's computers. Essentially, he attached a CPU mimicking the human brain to a 'dumb calculator.' The first stored-program ...

Episode: 2487 John von Neumann’s ideas on the similarities and differences of computers and brains. Today, UH math professor Krešo Josić talks about brains, computers and John von Neumann.

George Dyson has written a fascinating but flawed history of the computer. The son of the distinguished physicist Freeman Dyson, he was born in 1953 and as a child was witness to the world of ...

Subject: The world”s most powerful computer goes to work on the problems of tomorrow An average human being on a good day might be able to add or subtract perhaps two or three numbers in a second. The ...

This article was featured in One Story to Read Today, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a single must-read from The Atlantic, Monday through Friday. Sign up for it here. If the most ...

Unlike his much more famous colleague Albert Einstein, John von Neumann is not a household name these days, but his discoveries shape the possibilities of life for every creature on this planet. As a ...

Most anecdotes about von Neumann abide by this three-act structure: a question that baffles the best minds; their sweaty, pointless deliberations; von Neumann’s swift, soaring leap to the solution.

The Man from the Future. By Ananyo Bhattacharya. Allen Lane; 368 pages; £20. To be published in America in February by W.W. Norton & Company; $30 IN 1945, WHILE in a state of exhaustion, the ...