John G. Kemeny
Template:Short description Template:Infobox officeholder John George Kemeny (born Kemény János György; May 31, 1926<ref name=Springer/> – December 26, 1992) was a Hungarian-born American mathematician, computer scientist, and educator best known for co-developing<ref name="NYT">Template:Cite news</ref> 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.<ref name="NYT"/> According to György Marx he was one of "The Martians".<ref>A marslakók legendája Template:Webarchive - György Marx</ref>
Early life and education
Born in Budapest, Hungary, into a Jewish family,<ref name=Springer>Template:Cite book</ref> Kemeny attended the Rácz private primary school in Budapest and was a classmate of Nándor Balázs. In 1938 his father left for the United States alone. In 1940, he took the whole Kemeny family to the United States<ref name=Springer/> when the adoption of the second anti-Jewish law in Hungary became imminent.<ref name=Ohles/> His grandfather, however, refused to leave and was killed in the Holocaust, along with an aunt and uncle.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
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.<ref name="NYT"/> In 1943,<ref name=Springer/> 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 at Los Alamos National Laboratory, where his boss was Richard Feynman. He also worked there with John von Neumann. Returning to Princeton, Kemeny graduated with an A.B. in mathematics in 1946 after completing a senior thesis, titled "Equivalent logical systems", under the supervision of Alonzo Church.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> He then remained at Princeton to pursue graduate studies and received a Ph.D. in mathematics in 1949 after completing a doctoral dissertation, titled "Type-theory vs. set-theory", also under the supervision of Alonzo Church.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref name="NYT" />
Kemeny worked as Albert Einstein's mathematical assistant during graduate school.<ref name="Springer" /> J. Laurie Snell writes the following about Einstein's advice to Kemeny and seeing him drawn to the United World Federalists (UWF) movement:<ref name=":0">Template:Cite web</ref>
United World Federalists was the movement through which Kemeny met his future wife, then-Smith student Jean Alexander.<ref name=":0" />
Career
Kemeny was appointed to the Dartmouth Mathematics Department as a full professor in 1953, at the age of 27.<ref name=Springer/> Two years later he became chairman of the department, and held this post until 1967. Kemeny ventured into curriculum development when he introduced Finite mathematics courses. He teamed with Gerald L. Thompson and J. Laurie Snell to write Introduction to Finite Mathematics (1957) for students of biology and social sciences. The Dartmouth mathematics department professors also wrote Finite Mathematical Structures (1959) and Finite Mathematics with Business Applications (1962). Other colleges and universities followed this lead and several more textbooks in Finite Mathematics were composed elsewhere.
The topic of Markov chains was particularly popular so Kemeny teamed with J. Laurie Snell to publish Finite Markov Chains (1960) to provide an introductory college textbook. Considering the advances using potential theory obtained by G. A. Hunt, they wrote Denumerable Markov Chains in 1966.<ref>Doob, J. L. (1966) Review: Denumerable Markov Chains, Template:MR</ref> This textbook, suitable for advanced seminars,<ref>Preface, page vi</ref> was followed by a second edition in 1976 when an additional chapter on random fields by David Griffeath was included.
Kemeny and Kurtz were pioneers in the use of computers for ordinary people. After early experiments with ALGOL 30 and DOPE on 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.<ref name="ncc1974">Template:Cite web</ref> BASIC was the language used in software written during the rise of the Apple II, Commodore's PET, VIC-20 and C64, Tandy TRS-80, and IBM PCs throughout the 1980s, and its successor on PCs, Visual Basic. In 1980s, Sinclair BASIC was also essential for Sinclair ZX family of computers.<ref name=reg>Template:Cite magazine</ref>
Kemeny served as president of Dartmouth from 1970 to 1981; he 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<ref name="NYT"/> 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<ref name="NYT"/> on December 26, 1992.<ref name=Ohles>Template:Cite book</ref> He had lived in Etna, near the Dartmouth campus.
See also
- Kemeny method
- Kemeny's constant (an invariant sum arising in the study of finite Markov chains).
- The Martians (scientists)
- New Hampshire Historical Marker No. 261: BASIC: The First User-Friendly Computer Programming Language
- Kemeny, J. G. (1962). Finite mathematics with business applications. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall. From https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015015426292
References
External links
- The Papers of John G. Kemeny in the Dartmouth College Library Template:Webarchive
- Posted in the article with permission from Dartmouth College
- Dartmouth Wheelock Succession
- Bio at Bellevue C.C. site
- A sketch of John Kemeny for the Dartmouth Alumni Magazine
- Template:MacTutor
- Birth of BASIC documentary
- Template:MathGenealogy
- Interview with Kemeny about his experience at Princeton
- True Basic Inc. information
- Template:Find a Grave
Template:Dartmouth College presidents Template:Authority control
- 20th-century American academics
- 20th-century American mathematicians
- Mathematical economists
- American mathematics educators
- American computer scientists
- Jewish American scientists
- BASIC programming language
- Programming language designers
- Presidents of Dartmouth College
- Dartmouth College faculty
- People associated with nuclear power
- Manhattan Project people
- Princeton University alumni
- George Washington Educational Campus alumni
- American people of Hungarian-Jewish descent
- Jews who immigrated to the United States to escape Nazism
- Hungarian emigrants to the United States
- People from Pest, Hungary
- 20th-century Hungarian Jews
- 20th-century American Jews
- 1926 births
- 1992 deaths