Name John Kemeny | Role Mathematician | |
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Books Finite Markov Chains, Denumerable Markov chains, Man and the Computer, Finite Mathematics with Busi, Back to BASIC: The History - C Similar People Thomas E Kurtz, Alonzo Church, Hans‑Jurgen Zimmermann, Robert Lantos, Denis Heroux | ||
John g kemeny
John George Kemeny (Hungarian: Kemény János György; May 31, 1926 – December 26, 1992) was a Jewish-Hungarian American mathematician, computer scientist, and educator best known for co-developing the BASIC programming language in 1964 with Thomas E. Kurtz. Kemeny served as the 13th President of Dartmouth College from 1970 to 1981 and pioneered the use of computers in college education. Kemeny chaired the presidential commission that investigated the Three Mile Island accident in 1979.
Contents
- John g kemeny
- The Computer and the Campus An interview with John Kemeny
- Early life
- Career
- Death
- References
The Computer and the Campus: An interview with John Kemeny
Early life
Born in Budapest, Hungary, Kemeny attended the Rácz private primary school in Budapest and was a classmate of Nandor Balazs. In 1938 his father left for the United States alone. In 1940, he took the whole Kemeny family to the United States when the adoption of the second anti-Jewish law in Hungary became imminent. His grandfather, however, refused to leave and perished in the Holocaust, along with an aunt and uncle. Kemeny's family settled in New York City where he attended George Washington High School. He graduated with the best results in his class three years later. In 1943 Kemeny entered Princeton University where he studied mathematics and philosophy, but he took a year off during his studies to work on the Manhattan Project in Los Alamos National Laboratory. His boss there was Richard Feynman. He also worked there with John von Neumann. Returning to Princeton, Kemeny graduated with his B.A. in 1947, then worked for his Doctorate under Alonzo Church. He worked as Albert Einstein's mathematical assistant during graduate school. Kemeny was awarded his doctorate in 1949 for a dissertation entitled "Type-Theory vs. Set-Theory".
Career
Kemeny was appointed to the Dartmouth Mathematics Department in 1953. Two years later he became chairman of the Department, and held this post until 1967. Kemeny and Kurtz pioneered the use of computers for ordinary people. After early experiments with the LGP-30, they invented the BASIC programming language in 1964, as well as one of the world's first time-sharing systems, the Dartmouth Time-Sharing System (DTSS). In 1974, the American Federation of Information Processing Societies gave an award to Kemeny and Kurtz at the National Computer Conference for their work on BASIC and time-sharing.
Kemeny was president of Dartmouth from 1970 to 1981, and continued to teach undergraduate courses and to do research and publish papers during his time as president. He presided over the coeducation of Dartmouth in 1972. He also instituted the "Dartmouth Plan" of year-round operations, thereby allowing more students without more buildings. During his administration, Dartmouth became more proactive in recruiting and retaining minority students and revived its founding commitment to provide education for American Indians. Kemeny made Dartmouth a pioneer in student use of computers, equating computer literacy with reading literacy. In 1982 he returned to teaching full-time.
In 1983, Kemeny and Kurtz co-founded a company called True BASIC, Inc. to market True BASIC, an updated version of the language.
Death
John Kemeny died at the age of 66, the result of heart failure in Lebanon, New Hampshire on December 26, 1992. He had lived in Etna, near the Dartmouth Campus.