John Von Neumann
Adam Baldwin · 2015
John Von Neumann was born Neumann János Lajos in Budapest in 1903. Considered a child prodigy, by the age of six he was able to memorize telephone directories and could hold a conversation in classical Greek. By eight he was proficient with integral calculus. Receiving his PhD aged 22 from Budapest's Pázmány Péter University, he emigrated to the United States in 1930, whereupon his name was changed to ‘John von Neumann'. Von Neumann is generally regarded as one of the greatest mathematicians in modern history. Throughout his life he wrote 150 published papers, mainly on pure mathematics, applied mathematics and physics. Von Neumann's revolutionary studies on game theory have allowed us to look at the relationships between participants and predict their optimal decisions. In 1944, the minimax theorem's application was enhanced to cover the more realistic scenario involving games played with imperfect information and over two players.