American Decades
"The General and Logical Theory of Automata"
Presentation
By: John von Neumann
Date: 1948
Source: Von Neumann, John. "The General and Logical Theory of Automata." Presented at the Hixon Symposium on September 20, 1948, at the California Institute of Technology. Reprinted in The World of Physics: A Small Library of the Literature of Physics from Antiquity to the Present. Jefferson Hane Weaver, ed. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987, 606–607.
About the Author: John von Neumann (1903–1957) received early instruction in his native Budapest from Michael Fekete, publishing his first paper with Fekete at the age of 18. He went on to study in Berlin and Zurich, completing his Ph.D. in mathematics at the University of Budapest in 1926. One of the original six professors of mathematics at Princeton University's Institute for Advanced Studies (IAS), von Neumann played a large part in the design of the IAS computer. He also...
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1940's Science and Technology Primary Sources
- Linus Pauling's Research Notebooks
- Atanasoff/Mauchly Correspondence, 1941
- Heredity and Environment
- "Feasibility of a Chain Reaction"
- ENIAC Progress Report
- Radar Electronic Fundamentals
- "World's Greatest Mathematical Calculator"
- "As We May Think"
- Race: Science and Politics
- "Three-Electrode Circuit Element Utilizing Semiconductive Materials"
- Cybernetics
- "The General and Logical Theory of Automata"
- Draft Letter from Niels Bohr to Werner Heisenberg, ca. 1957
- Copyright Page
- Acknowledgments
