John Kemeny was born into a family of Hungarian Jews [3] . At school, he sat at the same desk with the future famous physicist Nandor Balazh. After the outbreak of the war, the family emigrated to New York in January 1940, fearing the growing dependence of the Hortist regime on Nazi Germany [3] ; relatives remaining in Hungary died in concentration camps. [four]
After graduating with honors from high school, John entered Princeton University ( 1943 ), where he studied mathematics and philosophy. A gifted student was involved in the Manhattan project , where he worked under the guidance of Richard Feynman . There he met John von Neumann .
In 1947, Kemeny received a bachelor's degree and began work on a doctorate in the field of foundations of mathematics [5] , which he defended two years later. Its supervisor was Alonzo Church . At the same time, Kemeny collaborated with Einstein, who lived in Princeton , as a consultant on mathematical issues. [3]
In 1951 he got married. He had two children.
Since 1953, Kemeni has been teaching at the Department of Mathematics at the prestigious Dartmouth College . [3] From 1955 to 1967 he was the head of this faculty, and in 1970 he became (without leaving a teaching job) president of Dartmouth College. During this period, he was attracted to the ideas of automating programming and the use of computers in learning. Together with Thomas Kurtz, he developed for this the first version of the Basic programming language ( 1964 ), which he implemented on a specially developed time-sharing system for the LGP-30 mini-computer network.
He died of heart disease in 1992 . [6]
Published several monographs in the field of mathematical logic and discrete mathematics. The main contribution was made to the theory of finite Markov chains . His name is called the constant Kemeny . [7]