Neumann János Lajos, this is his birth name, was born on December 28, 1903, in Budapest, in the then Austro-Hungarian Empire. In 1913 his father was elevated to the nobility by Emperor Franz Josef for his service so his family acquired the hereditary title of margittai.

Little János, nicknamed Jancsi, was a child prodigy. With his photographic memory, he learned differential and integral calculus throughout his childhood and at 15 he started studying advanced calculus. He showed talent in the field of languages too ​​but his orientation was towards mathematics, so much that at age 19 he had already published important articles in that field. At age 22 he received a Ph.D. in mathematics from the Pázmány Péter University in Budapest. At the same time, he earned a degree in chemical engineering from ETH Zurich because his father wanted him to work in a field more lucrative than mathematics.

Between 1926 and 1930, von Neumann taught at the University of Berlin, the youngest in its history. During those years, he published several articles in the field of mathematics. In 1933, Princeton University, in the USA, offered him a position in the faculty of its Institute for Advanced Study. His father had died in 1929, his mother and his brothers came with him to the USA. The family had already changed its name to a more German von Neumann when it was elevated to the nobility, on arrival in the USA the mathematician changed his name becoming John von Neumann. In 1938 he became an American citizen.

As a teacher, John von Neumann created many problems for his students because he was progressing too quickly for their level. As a researcher, however, he developed mathematical applications in a variety of fields where there were many practical applications. His research concerned among other the Von Neumann-Bernays-Gödel (NBG) set theory, the ergodic theory, the von Neumann algebras, and other fields which concerned sciences such as quantum mechanics.

In the early ’40s, John von Neumann created the game theory and in 1944 he published the essay “Theory of Games and Economic Behavior” along with Oscar Morgenstern. This study of mathematical models of conflict and cooperation between intelligent rational decision-makers had significant developments with applications in various fields.

In 1937, John von Neumann started his collaboration with the U.S. military and during World War II he committed in the war effort against the Nazis. His contribution wasn’t only theoretical in mathematical applications to the war as may be ballistics but also marked the beginning of his work in fields of electronics and computer science.

John von Neumann is considered one of the fathers of computer science. His contribution was both theoretical, for example with the development of the research started by Alan Turing and the creation of the mathematical model of cellular automata, but also practical consulting to the ENIAC project, the first electronic computer ever built.

After the end of the Manhattan Project, John von Neumann kept on collaborating on the development of American nuclear weapons and also the first intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM). Luckily, those jobs had also civilian applications because the rockets were adapted for the space program.

In 1955, John von Neumann was diagnosed with cancer and died on February 8, 1957. In his life he was married twice: in 1930 he married Mariette Kövesi, the two had a daughter named Marina and divorced in 1937, in 1938 he married Klara Dan. He was an extremely brilliant scientist whose work has profoundly influenced many fields, not only of sciences, leaving a large footprint on today’s world.