John von Neumann (1903–1957)
Born in Budapest to a banking family, von Neumann was a child prodigy who could divide eight-digit numbers in his head by age six. By his twenties, he was helping formalize quantum mechanics. He immigrated to America in the 1930s, helped design the atomic bomb in the 1940s, and in the 1950s, quietly built the blueprint for every computer in the world. He laid the foundations of game theory, AI, and self-replicating machines. He called what was coming “a singularity," a point when machines would evolve past us. In his final days, ravaged by cancer, he began to fear what he had built. Was he a genius ahead of his times, or was he something more, something leading us in an ominous direction that he felt was inevitable?
FOR MORE
The Life of John von Neumann -- Britannica
The Maniac by Benjamin Labatut
John von Neumann and the art of being there
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