Klara Dan von Neumann

Who was Klara Dan von Neumann?

Klára Dán Von Neumann was a scientist, and a pioneer computer programmer. She wrote the code used on the MANIAC machine developed by John Von Neumann and Julian Bigelow at the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory. She was also involved in the design of new controls for ENIAC and taught early weather scientists how to program.

Klára wrote the preface to John von Neumann's posthumously published, influential Silliman Lectures, later edited and published by Yale University Press as "The Computer and the Brain".

She was born in Budapest, Hungary in 1911, to Károly - Karl Dán and Camila Stadler. She reportedly took her own life in 1963. She was married four times, including to John Von Neumann in 1938, and to Carl Eckart in 1958.

She features significantly in computing historian George Dyson's book, Turing's Cathedral: The Origins of the Digital Universe, ISBN 978-0375422775.