John G. Kemeny, a mathematician and college president, pioneered "new math" and the use of computers in general education. As a teenager he worked with American mathematician John Neumann on the United States Government's Manhattan Project and, as a graduate student, he was a research assistant for American physicist Albert Einstein. Working with Thomas Eugene Kurtz, a colleague at Dartmouth College, he coauthored the BASIC (Beginner's All-Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) computer programming language. Though intended only for Dartmouth mathematics students, BASIC became the world's most well-known programming language.

John George Kemeny was born in Budapest, Hungary, on May 31, 1926, to Tibor and Lucy Kemeny. He lived in Budapest with his parents and sister until 1940, when his father, fearing an imminent German invasion, took his family to the United States. At the time, Kemeny spoke three languages, none of which were English. Nevertheless, when he graduated from high school in...