John von Neumann was the scientist who conceived a fundamental idea that serves all modern computers - that a computer's program and the data that it processes do not have to be fed into the computer while it is working, but can be kept in the computer's memory - a notion generally referred to as the stored-program computer . In his short life, von Neumann became one of the most acclaimed and lauded scientists of the 20th century. He left an indelible mark on the fields of mathematics, quantum theory, game theory, nuclear physics, and computer science.