"The Jewish genius mathematician John von Neumann is the mastermind behind today's computers. Essentially, he attached a CPU mimicking the human brain to a 'dumb calculator.' The first stored-program ...

George Dyson has written a fascinating but flawed history of the computer. The son of the distinguished physicist Freeman Dyson, he was born in 1953 and as a child was witness to the world of ...

In the heart of Manchester, UK, a groundbreaking event took place in 1948: the first modern computer, known as the Manchester Baby, ran its very first program. The Baby’s ability to execute stored ...

Subject: The world”s most powerful computer goes to work on the problems of tomorrow An average human being on a good day might be able to add or subtract perhaps two or three numbers in a second. The ...

This article was featured in One Story to Read Today, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a single must-read from The Atlantic, Monday through Friday. Sign up for it here. If the most ...

Unlike his much more famous colleague Albert Einstein, John von Neumann is not a household name these days, but his discoveries shape the possibilities of life for every creature on this planet. As a ...

Most anecdotes about von Neumann abide by this three-act structure: a question that baffles the best minds; their sweaty, pointless deliberations; von Neumann’s swift, soaring leap to the solution.