who made important contributions to a wide range of areas of pure and applied mathematics, physics, computer science, and economics. He was born in Budapest but lived in the United States from 1930, where he would become involved with the Manhattan Project. In applied mathematics, he was one of the founders of optimization theory and the theory of games. Within pure mathematics, his work in functional analysis is important, and through a Hilbert space approach to quantum theory he was able to unify the approaches of Heisenberg and Schrödinger. He was also involved crucially in the initial development of the modern electronic computer and the important concept of the stored program.