1940's Science and Technology | "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...