![Photo of Klara "Klari" Dan von Neumann](/women_pictures/Dan von Neumann_Klara "Klari".png)
Klara "Klari" Dan von Neumann
Personal Information
Born: 1911
Died: 1963
Country of Birth: Hungary
Nationality: Hungarian-American
Ethnicity: White
Education
Veres Pálné Gimnázium Budapest 1929.
"“I became Johnny’s experimental rabbit,” she told Dyson years afterward. “I learned how to translate algebraic equations into numerical forms, which in turn then have to be put into machine language in the order in which the machine has to calculate it, either in sequence or going round and round, until it has finished with one part of the problem, and then go on some definite which-a-way, whatever seems to be right for it to do next.” (smithsonianmag.com); "
— Klara "Klari" Dan von Neumann
Professional Life
Field of Study: Computer coding/Programming
Institution/Corporation: Los Alamos National Labs
Degrees & Memberships: None found
Awards & Achievements
Awards: None found
Achievements: first woman to execute modern-style code on a computer; made significant contributions to the world of programming, including work on the Monte Carlo method (a method to store and analyze large quantities of data and make predictions on everything from elections to COVID-19 trend forecasting), ENIAC, and MANIAC; programmed the MANIAC I machine, which could store data, designed by her husband and Julian Bigelow; worked on the ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer) on a project with her husband to produce the first successful meteorological forecast on a computer; designed new controls for ENIAC;
At 14, became a national champion in figure skating
she immigrated to the United States in 1938 after her marriage to her 3rd husband John who was a professor at Princeton University
John went to work on the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos in 1943 & she remained at Princeton joining him in 1947 when she was contracted to work there
her job at Los Alamos was to translate mathematical instructions into a language the computer could understand
after her husband's death from cancer in 1957, she wrote the preface to his Silliman Lectures
wrote an unpublished memoir entitled "A Grasshopper in Very Tall Grass"
2022, was the subject of a multi-episode season of the Lost Women of Science podcast
married oceanographer and physicist Carl Eckart in 1958 and moved to La Jolla, California
died in 1963 when she drove from her home in La Jolla to the beach and walked into the surf weighing down her dress with 15 pounds of sand and drowned, the San Diego coroner's office listed her death as a suicide
was a self-taught engineer & computer scientist
had a dog she named Inverse
only had a high school diploma with algebra & trigonometry classes, took calculus at Columbia University in 1947 at her husband's suggestion
worked at Princeton University's Office of Population Research investigating population trends during WWII & learning her mathematical skills
1962 asked to be removed from a computer magazine's mailing list because "I no longer work with computers"
became a US citizen in 1942