John von Neumann

In welcome remarks delivered to the 2025–26 class of IAS scholars, Director and Leon Levy Professor David Nirenberg reflected on the Institute’s role as "a special place" dedicated to discovery. He emphasized how the Institute's history, culture of solitude and community, and spirit of dialogue create an environment where scholars can push the boundaries of knowledge.

In this episode of Institute Instances, Chief Information Officer Jeff Berliner highlights the Institute for Advanced Study's remarkable technological legacy, which began with the Electronic Computer Project, led by John von Neumann, founding Professor in the School of Mathematics (1933–55).

In the cognitive revolution, psychologists, recognizing that developments in information processing had potential for studying the human mind, sought for the first time to apply new ideas in early artificial intelligence, computer science, and neuroscience to psychology. The Institute, as the home of one of the first modern computers, was uniquely poised to serve as a hub for this nascent field of study.

Robbert Dijkgraaf, Director and Leon Levy Professor, gives a talk to incoming scholars on the history and mission of the Institute during Welcome Day on September 25, 2017.

In 1930, the Institute was created as an academic retreat for the pursuit of daring research, unfettered by material constraints. From the beginning, political turmoil around the world interfered with this dream. This exhibit traces key moments in this history, focusing on questions of displacement and academic freedom in Europe, the United States, and Latin America from the 1930s to the 1970s. 

The following excerpt is from the article “Can We Survive Technology?” by John von Neumann, published by Fortune magazine in 1955. Von Neumann was among the Institute’s first Professors and its youngest. Having pioneered the modern computer, game theory, nuclear deterrence, and more, von Neumann illuminated the fields of pure and applied mathematics, computer science, physics, and economics. 

In 2012–13, the Institute’s School of Mathematics hosted a special year devoted to the topic “Univalent Foundations of Mathematics,” organized by Steve Awodey, Professor at Carnegie Mellon University, Thierry Coquand, Professor at the University of...

There are two kinds of creation myths: those where life arises out of the mud, and those where life falls from the sky. In this creation myth, computers arose from the mud, and code fell from the sky. 

The history of digital computing can be divided into an Old Testament whose prophets, led by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, supplied the logic, and a New Testament whose prophets, led by John von Neumann, built the machines. Alan Turing, whose “On...

What explains “the unreasonable effectiveness” of mathematics, as the late Princeton University physicist Eugene Wigner phrased it, in answering questions about the real world?

Natural phenomena could have been structured in a way that couldn’t be...