Neumann Cohort: Behind the Name

At Emerging Digital Academy, we name each cohort after a historical figure that had a lasting impact on the tech world. We started with Ada, named after Ada Lovelace who was the first computer programmer. We are now in our fourteenth cohort, the Neumann Cohort.

This cohort is named after Klára Dán von Neumann who was one of the first computer programmers. She was the first woman to use modern-style code on a computer. She was truly a pioneer in the tech industry.

 

The Beginning

Klára’s journey into the tech world started just after Pearl Harbor when she landed a job at Princeton as the “Head of Statistical Computing Group”, a position she worked until 1946.

 

The MANIAC I 

In 1947, she was contracted to work at Los Alamos in New Mexico on the MANIAC I machine. Her work on the MANIAC I machine consisted of translating mathematical instructions into something that the computer could understand. Her knowledge and creativity impressed the crew at Los Alamos and she continued to work with them on several other projects.

 

The ENIAC & Monte Carlo Project

After working on the MANIAC I machine, she began working on the ENIAC and she ended up being one of the primary programmers for the project, revolutionizing the process of reprogramming the ENIAC machine. At the time she didn’t have libraries of code to learn and pull things from, instead, she had to invent the processes and procedures as she went along. She coded the first program using the “modern-style”, the Monte Carlo Project. The Monte Carlo Project was able to analyze large quantities of data and make predictions.

 

 

References

https://www.forbes.com/sites/marshallshepherd/2017/01/24/how-a-woman-you-never-heard-of-helped-enable-modern-weather-prediction/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kl%C3%A1ra_D%C3%A1n_von_Neumann

 

 

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