John von Neumann

Born in Budapest in 1903, János Neumann was already rewriting the foundations of mathematics and quantum physics by his twenties. He arrived in America and kept going: cellular automata, self-replicating systems, the stored-program computer. During World War II he developed the explosive-lens math that made implosion weapons possible, then spent the 1950s at the peak of Cold War influence—chairing missile committees, sitting on the Atomic Energy Commission, designing the country's first ICBM programs as the Defense Department's leading nuclear strategist. He died in 1957 at fifty-three, leavin…