Peter G. Neumann
American computer scientist (1932 - 2026)
Peter Gabriel Neumann (September 21, 1932 – May 17, 2026) was an American computer science researcher who studied how computer systems fail and advocated for the principles that make them fail less often.. Neumann worked on the Multics operating system in the 1960s, and edited the RISKS Digest columns for ACM Software Engineering Notes and Communications of the ACM. He founded ACM SIGSOFT and was a Fellow of the ACM, IEEE, and AAAS.
Early life and education
Neumann was born on September 21, 1932, in Manhattan, New York, to Elsa Schmid Neumann, a mosaic artist, and Israel Ber Neumann, an art dealer.
His mother was commissioned to create a mosaic of Einstein and became friendly with him. While a student at Harvard, he had a two-hour breakfast with Albert Einstein, on 8 November 1952, discussing simplicity in design.
He held three degrees from Harvard University — an A.B. (1954) in Mathematics, and an S.M. (1955) and Ph.D. (1961) in Applied Mathematics and Science. He held a Fulbright scholarship in Germany from 1958–1960.
Career
Neumann worked at Bell Labs from 1960 to 1970. He worked at SRI International in Menlo Park, California since 1971.
Before the RISKS mailing list, Neumann was known for the Provably Secure Operating System (PSOS).
Neumann worked with Dorothy E. Denning in the 1980s to develop a computer intrusion detection system known as IDES that was a model for later computer security software.
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The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 29, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7174137. VIAF identifies the subject as 107598228. The Library of Congress control number is n81049827. 4 of 5 selected statements include explicit references; 2 carry qualifiers and 1 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1932, 2026, 1952 and 1954.
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This entry incorporates text from “Peter G. Neumann” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.