John Van Neumann was a founder of the modern digital computer, member of the Manhattan Project Team, creator of game theory and the concept of cellular automata. In this presentation from O'Reilly's Emerging Technology 2005, George Dyson, technology historian, presents a talk on Von Neumann's life as he was developing the foundations of computing at Princeton University during the 1930's, 40's and 50's. An interesting look into the quirky life of one of the great scientists of the past.

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George Dyson, Historian of Technology, is a boat designer, writer, and historian of technology whose interests have ranged from the development and redevelopment of the Aleut kayak (Baidarka, 1986) to the evolution of digital computing and telecommunications (Darwin Among the Machines, 1997) and, most recently, nuclear bomb-propelled space exploration (Project Orion, 2002).

Resources:

• Slides from this presentation (PDF)

This presentation is one of a series from the O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference held in San Diego, California, March 14-17, 2005.

For Team ITC:

• Description editor: Douglas E. Welch
• Post-production audio engineer: Paul Figgiani