Kemeny, John George

Kemeny, John George

(born May 31, 1926, Budapest, Hung.—died Dec. 26, 1992, Hanover, N.H., U.S.) Hungarian-born U.S. mathematician and computer scientist. He emigrated to the U.S. with his family at 14. He took a year off from his undergraduate studies at Princeton University to work on the Manhattan Project and was later a research assistant to Albert Einstein. He received a Ph.D. in 1949 and joined the Dartmouth College faculty in 1953, where he worked to develop the mathematics department. In the mid 1960s he and Thomas E. Kurtz (b. 1928) developed the BASIC computer programming language. He was a pioneer in the promotion of “new math” and the use of computers in education. He served as president of Dartmouth (1970–91).