April 3, 2003

John von Neumann's Universe
Digital Computing at the Princeton Institute for Advanced Study, 1945-1958

A talk by George Dyson

Synopsis: John von Neumann (1903-1957) began building a stored-program high-speed electronic digital computer at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton at the end of World War II. "Words coding the orders are handled in the memory just like numbers," he announced at the first meeting of the IAS Electronic Computer Project on November 12, 1945. Duson will present new material illustrating some highlights of hardware and software development at the IAS, with an emphasis on some pioneering work in computational biology in which the Institute took the lead. Breaking the distinction between numbers that mean things and numbers that do things unleashed the full power of ideas that had been incubating among minds and laboratories throughout the world. Nothing has been the same since.

Thursday, April 3 4:00 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. in Room 338 Park Science Building (Tea at 3:30 p.m.)

Computing History Month Main Page | Directions | The Bryn Mawr Center for Science and Society

Useful links relating to John von Neumann:

A short but comprehensive biography with reference material (from Virginia Tech)

History of Computing on the Web

• The Charles Babbage Institute
• The Computer History Association of California
• The History of Computing Project
• The Internet Society
• The History of Computing
• The Computer History Museum
• A History of Computers
• The Living Internet