John von Neumann was a Hungarian-born mathematician who worked in the United States. He made contributions in many fields, including the mathematical foundations of quantum mechanics and the founding of game theory, and he is also known for proposing the basic architecture of today’s computers (the von Neumann architecture). His brilliance even earned him the nickname “the Martian.”
In a memorial essay written after his death, the mathematician Stanislaw Ulam recorded that von Neumann had said that “the ever accelerating progress of technology” gave “the appearance of approaching some essential singularity in the history of the race.” This is considered an early example of the idea of the singularity.
