约翰·克米尼John George Kemeny

约翰·克米尼的母亲是Lucy Fried，父亲是Tibor Kemeny，从事进出口批发。弗瑞兹·约翰在布达佩斯上小学。他来自一个犹太家庭，1940年，他的父亲明智地带着家人去了美国。可以理解的是，并非所有家人都想离开家园，但克米尼的祖父拒绝离开，死于大屠杀。克米尼的一位姑姑和一位叔叔也未能幸免于纳粹。

克米尼的家人定居在纽约，约翰就读于纽约市的克米尼华盛顿高中。克米尼于1945年成为美国公民后进入普林斯顿大学，在那里学习数学和哲学。然而，他在本科课程期间休学一年，前往洛斯阿拉莫斯参与曼哈顿计划。他在洛斯阿拉莫斯的老板是理查德·费曼，他也在那里与冯·诺伊曼共事。

1946年回到普林斯顿后，克米尼担任研究和教学助理以及数学讲师，尽管他当时仍是本科生。他于1947年获得学士学位，然后在丘奇的指导下攻读博士学位。克米尼于1949年获得博士学位，学位论文题为Type-Theory vs. Set-Theory。在攻读博士学位期间，他被任命为阿尔伯特·爱因斯坦的数学助理。克米尼后来写道：-

人们会问——你懂足够的物理来帮助阿尔伯特·爱因斯坦吗？我的标准回答是：阿尔伯特·爱因斯坦在物理上不需要帮助。但与普遍看法相反，阿尔伯特·爱因斯坦在数学上确实需要帮助。我这么说并不是说他不擅长数学。他非常擅长数学，但他不是一位跟上最新进展的研究级数学家。他的助理是数学家有两个原因。首先，在普通的计算中，任何人都会犯错。有许多冗长的计算，从一个公式推导出另一个公式来求解一个微分方程。它们没完没了。我们无数次得到错误的答案。有时我们中的一个得到错误答案，有时是另一个。计算足够长，如果你最终得到相同的答案，你就有信心。所以他需要一位助理来做这个，而且，坦率地说，我在数学上比他更跟上最新进展。

克米尼在海军研究办公室提供的博士后奖学金上度过了两年。1950年，他与让·亚历山大结婚；他们有两个孩子。他继续学习数学和哲学，他的第一个全职教学职位是1951年在普林斯顿的哲学职位。但斯内尔在[2]中写道：-

他原本正走在一条传统的杰出学术生涯道路上，作为普林斯顿大学一位很有前途的年轻助理教授，同时受聘于数学系和哲学系，然而他却决定接受挑战，去一所他几乎没听说过、也肯定不以数学卓越中心而闻名的学院，创办一个新的数学系。

克米尼于1953年被任命到⟦L1⟧的数学系，两年后成为该系系主任。他担任这一职务直到1967年。1970年至1981年间他担任⟦L1⟧校长，1982年他重返全职教学。事实上，他在担任校长期间从未放弃教学，他把这一点作为接受该职位的条件。

大多数人会记住克米尼是BASIC（初学者通用符号指令代码）计算机语言的共同发明者。1963年，克米尼与Thomas Kurtz决定，他们想让学生能够方便地使用计算。Snell在2中写道：-

正如冯·诺伊曼意识到一台只做普通算术运算的计算机可以拥有非凡的能力，克米尼也意识到，要让每个人都能获得这种能力，一种编程语言可以而且应该极其简单。这促使他与Tom Kurtz一起开发了计算机语言BASIC……

克米尼和Kurtz设计了第一个“分时”系统，使许多学生可以同时使用一台计算机。BASIC的设计目的是让学生能够轻松编写程序。第一个BASIC程序于1964年5月4日凌晨2点在⟦L1⟧运行。次年，通用电气公司基于克米尼和Kurtz在⟦L1⟧所建立的东西，建立了第一个商业分时系统。1967年，BASIC的两位共同发明者出版了关于该语言的著作BASIC programming。

克米尼引入的一项教学创新是开发一门Finite Mathematics课程，其中包括今天对我们来说并不陌生的主题：逻辑、probability和矩阵代数。设计这门课程是因为他对数学（当时一年级课程完全是微积分）感到不满，认为它是[2]：-

……唯一一门你学了14年却学不到1800年以来任何成果的学科。

克米尼与来自达特茅斯的合著者Laurie Snell和Oskar L Thompson一起，撰写了许多关于有限数学的著名教材。他们合著了Introduction to finite mathematics（1957），其后续版本分别于1960年面向社会科学学生、1962年面向商科学生。他们还合著了Finite mathematical structures（1959），该书对该主题采取了更为理论化的处理方式，但也包含在电学和工程方面的应用。克米尼还撰写了A philosopher looks at science（1959），并与Snell以及来自康奈尔的Anthony Knapp合著了Denumerable Markov chains（1966）。

然而，克米尼在数学圈之外也广为人知，因为1979年，吉米·卡特总统请他担任调查三里岛核事故的委员会主席[1]：-

后来被称为克米尼委员会的该委员会，对核电行业及其联邦监管机构提出了严厉批评。

克米尼的性格由其妻子描绘如下：-

他喜欢科幻小说、橄榄球比赛、虾、各种谜题、阿加莎·克里斯蒂，以及（两人的）独处。他不喜欢社交。退休前，约翰只认得两种花——郁金香和玫瑰，以及两段音乐——《1812序曲》和《可怜的小蝴蝶花》。在最后这些年里，他有时间欣赏莫扎特、野花、北美黑啄木鸟、日食。有时他就喜欢静静地坐着思考。

许多奖项和荣誉授予了克米尼，例如1967年当选为美国艺术与科学院会士。他于1984年获得纽约科学院奖，1986年获得电气工程师学会计算机奖章，1990年获得路易斯·罗宾逊奖。他获得了二十个荣誉学位。

John Kemeny's mother was Lucy Fried and his father was Tibor Kemeny who worked as an import-export wholesaler. John attended primary school in Budapest. He came from a Jewish family and, in 1940, his father had the good sense to take his family to the United States. Understandably, not all the family wanted to leave their home but Kemeny's grandfather, who refused to leave, died in the Holocaust. An aunt and uncle of Kemeny's also failed to survive the Nazis.

Kemeny's family settled in New York and John attended the George Washington High School in New York City. Kemeny entered Princeton in 1945, after becoming an American citizen, where he studied mathematics and philosophy. However he took a year off during his undergraduate course to work on the Manhattan Project in Los Alamos. His boss in Los Alamos was Richard Feynman and he also worked there with von Neumann.

Returning to Princeton in 1946, Kemeny worked as a research and teaching assistant and an instructor in mathematics even though he was still an undergraduate. He graduated with his B.A. in 1947, then worked for his doctorate under Alonzo Church's supervision. Kemeny was awarded his doctorate in 1949 for a dissertation entitled Type-Theory vs. Set-Theory. While a doctoral student he was appointed as Albert Einstein's mathematical assistant. Kemeny later wrote:-

People would ask - did you know enough physics to help Einstein? My standard line was: Einstein did not need help in physics. But contrary to popular belief, Einstein did need help in mathematics. By which I do not mean that he wasn't good at mathematics. He was very good at it, but he was not an up-to-date research level mathematician. His assistants were mathematicians for two reasons. First of all, in just ordinary calculations, anybody makes mistakes. There were many long calculations, deriving one formula from another to solve a differential equation. They go on forever. Any number of times we got the wrong answer. Sometimes one of us got the wrong answer, sometimes the other. The calculations were long enough that if you got the same answer at the end, you were confident. So he needed an assistant for that, and, frankly, I was more up-to-date in mathematics than he was.

Kemeny spent two years on a postdoctoral fellowship granted by the Office for Naval research. In 1950 he married Jean Alexander; they had two children. He had continued to study both mathematics and philosophy and his first full-time teaching position, in 1951, was a philosophy appointment at Princeton. But Snell writes in [2]:-

He was on his way to a traditional distinguished scholarly career as a promising young assistant professor at Princeton with a joint appointment in mathematics and philosophy when he decided instead to accept the challenge of developing a new mathematics department at a college which he had barely heard of and which was certainly not known as a centre of excellence in mathematics.

So Kemeny was appointed to the Mathematics Department at Dartmouth in 1953 and, two years later, he became chairman of the Department. He held this post until 1967. He was president of Dartmouth between 1970 and 1981 and, in 1982, he returned to full-time teaching. In fact he never gave up teaching while he was president, he had made it a condition of taking the post.

Kemeny will be remembered by most people as the co-inventor of the BASIC (Beginners All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) computer language. It was in 1963 that Kemeny with Thomas Kurtz decided that they wanted to give students easy access to computing. Snell in [2] writes:-

Just as von Neumann realised that a computer that did only ordinary arithmetic operations could have extraordinary power, Kemeny realised that to make this power available to everyone, a programming language could and should be exceedingly simple. This led him to develop with Tom Kurtz the computer language BASIC ...

Kemeny and Kurtz designed the first "time sharing" system so that many students could a single computer at the same time. BASIC was designed to allow students to write programs easily. The first BASIC program was run at Dartmouth at 2 am on 4 May 1964. In the following year the General Electric Company established the first commercial time sharing system based on what Kemeny and Kurtz had set up at Dartmouth. In 1967 the two co-inventors of BASIC published their book on the language BASIC programming.

A teaching innovation which Kemeny introduced was in developing a Finite Mathematics course including topics that are no surprise to us today: logic, probability and matrix algebra. It was designed because he was unhappy that mathematics (entirely calculus in first year courses at that time) was [2]:-

...the only subject you can study for 14 years and not learn a single thing that has been done since 1800.

Along with co-authors Laurie Snell and Oskar L Thompson from Dartmouth, Kemeny wrote a number of famous texts on finite mathematics. They wrote Introduction to finite mathematics (1957) which appeared in later versions aimed at social science students in 1960 and business students in 1962. They also wrote Finite mathematical structures (1959) which gave a more theoretical approach to the topic but included applications to electricity and engineering. Kemeny also wrote A philosopher looks at science (1959) and with Snell and Anthony Knapp from Cornell he wrote Denumerable Markov chains (1966).

Kemeny was well known outside mathematical circles however for, in 1979, President Jimmy Carter asked him to chair the commission investigating the Three Mile Island nuclear accident [1]:-

The Kemeny Commission, as it came to be called, was very critical of the nuclear power industry and its federal regulators.

Kemeny's character was painted by his wife:-

He liked science fiction, football games, shrimp, all kinds of puzzles, Agatha Christie, and solitude (for two). He did not enjoy socialising. Before he retired, John recognised only two flowers, the tulip and the rose, and two pieces of music, the 1812 Overture and Poor Little Buttercup. These last years he had time to enjoy Mozart, wildflowers, pileated woodpeckers, eclipses. Sometimes he liked just to sit still and think.

Many awards and honours were bestowed on Kemeny such as election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1967). He was given the New York Academy of Sciences Award in 1984, the Institute of Electrical Engineers Computer Medal in 1986 and the Louis Robinson Award on 1990. He received twenty honorary degrees.