George Dyson To Lecture On "Von Neumann’s Universe" At Institute For Advanced Study
George Dyson, Director’s Visitor at the Institute for Advanced Study, will speak on "Von Neumann’s Universe: 1903-2003" on March 6 at 4:30 p.m. in Wolfensohn Hall on the Institute campus.
Dyson will discuss the work of mathematician John von Neumann (1903-1957), who joined the faculty of the Institute for Advanced Study in 1933. Says Dyson, "Few mathematicians have contributed both to mathematics and its applications across such a wide range of fields."
Dyson plans to present materials from the Institute archives "illustrating several facets of von Neumann’s career, with an emphasis on the revolution in computing – and some work in computational biology – in which the Institute took the lead."
A historian of science and technology, Dyson has interests ranging from the prehistory of the Aleut kayak to the evolution of digital computing and the exploration of space. His most recent book is Project Orion (2002), which examines the still-classified attempt, that took place between 1957 and 1965, to build a 4,000-ton nuclear-bomb-propelled interplanetary spaceship.
His previous book, Darwin Among the Machines (1997) helped place the IAS Electronic Computer Project "within the unusually broad spectrum of ideas that were revolutionized by the construction, here in Princeton, of this machine."
Dyson’s first book, Baidarka: The Kayak (1986), and his associated work on resurrecting the Aleut kayak, has been featured in television documentaries, such as Scientific American Frontiers, and such publications as the New York Times and Time magazine.
He attended Princeton High School and the University of California. He has been a research associate and visiting lecturer at Western Washington University since 1993. A frequent speaker on science and technology, Dyson participated in the Institute for Advanced Study’s Information Technology and Society Lecture Series in 2000.
The lecture, which is free and open to the public, is sponsored by the Association of Members of the Institute for Advanced Study. For further information call 609-734-8259.