John von Neumann (Hungarian Margittai Neumann János Lajos) (December 28, 1903 ? February 8, 1957) was a mathematician who made major contributions to a vast range of fields including quantum physics, functional analysis, set theory, topology, economics, computer science, numerical analysis, hydrodynamics (of explosions), statistics and many other mathematical fields as one of history's outstanding mathematicians.Most notably, von Neumann was a pioneer of the application of operator theory to qua