# John von Neumann

### Lost Women of Science Podcast, Season 2

"The first modern-style code ever executed on a computer was written in the 1940s, by a woman named Klára Dán von Neumann–or Klári to her family and friends. And the historic program she wrote was used to develop thermonuclear weapons. This season, we peer into a fascinating moment in postwar America through the prism of Klári’s work. We explore the evolution of early computers, the vital role women played in early programming, and the inextricable connection between computing and war."

### John von Neumann Thought He Had the Answers

"Just as there are von Neumann machines and von Neumann algebras, there are von Neumann anecdotes. Here’s a well-worn favorite. Late in the 1940s, years after he left Hungary for the United States and became a lionized mathematician, John von Neumann met a group of Rand Corporation scientists who wanted to use a computer he’d helped design."

### Tabula Rasa

"In June, 1948, when I graduated from Princeton High School, I already had a job, as a night watchman at the Institute for Advanced Study, on the far side of town. All kinds of people assumed that the Institute was part of Princeton University, which it wasn’t and isn’t."

### Adventures of a Mathematician

The Institute for Advanced Study distributed $21,742.50 in stipends for mathematics and$10,000 for theoretical physics during the academic year 1935–36. Three hundred dollars, sufficient to secure entry to the United States, was awarded to the Polish mathematician Stanislaw Ulam (1909–84), who had written to John von Neumann about a problem in measure theory in 1934.

### Paving a Way

There are scholars in the streets of the Institute for Advanced Study. These roads serve as an important reminder of the historic scholars that paved a way for the groundbreaking research that happens today on the Institute campus.

### Avi Wigderson Awarded 2021 Abel Prize

Avi Wigderson of the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) was named a recipient of the 2021 Abel Prize, which he shares jointly with László Lovász—a former IAS visiting professor—of Eötvös Loránd University. They are cited by the Abel Committee “for...

### The Computer Maverick Who Modeled the Evolution of Life

"In 1953, at the dawn of modern computing, Nils Aall Barricelli played God. Clutching a deck of playing cards in one hand and a stack of punched cards in the other, Barricelli hovered over one of the world’s earliest and most influential computers...