Klára Dán von Neumann facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Klára Dán von Neumann
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Photo by Alfred Eisenstaedt
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| Born | August 18, 1911 |
| Died | November 10, 1963 (aged 52) San Diego, California, United States
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| Fields | Computer science |
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Klára Dán von Neumann (born Klára Dán; August 18, 1911 – November 10, 1963) was a Hungarian-American computer scientist. She taught herself about computers and is known as one of the very first computer programmers.
Her Early Life
Klára Dán was born in Budapest, Hungary, on August 18, 1911. Her parents, Károly Dán and Kamilla Stadler, were a wealthy family. During World War I, her father was an officer. After the war, her family moved to Vienna to escape political problems in Hungary. When things settled down, they moved back to Budapest. Her family often hosted parties, where Klára met many different people.
When she was 14, Klára became a national champion in figure skating. She went to Veres Pálné Gimnázium in Budapest and finished school in 1929.
Klára married Ferenc Engel in 1931. Later, she married Andor Rapoch in 1936. She met a famous Hungarian mathematician named John von Neumann during one of his visits to Budapest. In 1938, Klára divorced Rapoch to marry John von Neumann.
Becoming a Computer Pioneer
After their wedding, Klára moved to the United States with John von Neumann. He was a professor at Princeton University. In 1943, John von Neumann moved to Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. He worked there on calculations for the Manhattan Project, a secret project during World War II. Klára stayed at Princeton until 1946, working at the university's Office of Population Research.
After the war, Klára joined her husband in New Mexico. She began programming the MANIAC I computer. This machine was designed by her husband and Julian Bigelow. It was one of the first computers that could store information.
Programming Early Computers
Klára then worked on another important early computer called ENIAC. This was the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer. She worked with John von Neumann on a project to create the first successful weather forecast using a computer. Klára designed new controls for ENIAC. She was one of its main programmers. She also trained a group of people from the Manhattan Project. She taught them how to store computer programs using binary code.
She taught meteorologists how to program ENIAC. She managed 100,000 punch cards for the project. This made sure no data was lost. She worked for 32 days on this project. She carefully checked the final computer code.
After her husband passed away in 1957, Klára wrote the introduction for his Silliman Lectures. These lectures were published in 1958. Later, Yale University Press published them as a book called The Computer and the Brain.
Later Life
In 1958, Klára married Carl Eckart. He was an oceanographer and physicist. They moved to La Jolla, California. Klára Dán von Neumann died in 1963.
