''The Computer and the Brain'' is an unfinished book by mathematician

John von Neumann John von Neumann (; hu, Neumann János Lajos, ; December 28, 1903 – February 8, 1957) was a Hungarian-American mathematician, physicist, computer scientist, engineer and polymath. He was regarded as having perhaps the widest cove ...

, begun shortly before his death and first published in 1958. Von Neumann was an important figure in computer science, and the book discusses how the brain can be viewed as a computing machine. The book is speculative in nature, but von Neumann discusses several important differences between brains and computers of his day (such as processing speed and parallelism), as well as suggesting directions for future research. At only 96 pages, the book was originally intended for Yale's

Silliman lecture The Silliman Memorial lectures series has been published by Yale University since 1901. The lectures were established by the university on the foundation of a bequest of $80,000, left in 1883 by Augustus Ely Silliman, in memory of his mother, Mrs. ...

s, but it was published posthumously. The first edition was published in 1958 with a preface by

Klara Dan von Neumann Klara may refer to: * Klara, a female given name, see Clara (given name) * Klara (radio), a classical-music radio station in Belgium * Klara (singer), birth name Klára Vytisková (born 1985), Czech singer * Klara (Stockholm), an area of central S ...

. The second edition, published in 2000, contains a foreword by

Paul Churchland Paul Montgomery Churchland (born October 21, 1942) is a Canadian philosopher known for his studies in neurophilosophy and the philosophy of mind. After earning a Ph.D. from the University of Pittsburgh under Wilfrid Sellars (1969), Churchland ros ...

and

Patricia Churchland Patricia Smith Churchland (born 16 July 1943) is a Canadian-American analytic philosopher noted for her contributions to neurophilosophy and the philosophy of mind. She is UC President's Professor of Philosophy Emerita at the University of Calif ...

that places von Neumann's views in the context of science at that time. The third edition, published in 2012, features a foreword by

Ray Kurzweil Raymond Kurzweil ( ; born February 12, 1948) is an American computer scientist, author, inventor, and futurist. He is involved in fields such as optical character recognition (OCR), text-to-speech synthesis, speech recognition technology, and e ...

. It has the .

References

External links

* Computer books Neuroscience books 1958 non-fiction books Yale University Press books {{compu-book-stub

See also

References

External links