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\title{John George Kemeny\\{\small(May 13, 1926-December 26,
    1992)\\Obituary for Manchester Guardian} }
\author{J. Laurie Snell}
\date{December 1992}


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John Kemeny will be remembered for his contributions to computing and
mathematics education, and also for the sweeping changes he brought to
Dartmouth during his eleven years as president of this prestigious Ivy
League college.

Born in Budapest, Hungary, Kemeny came to the United States in 1940
and, after completing his high school education in New York, attended
Princeton University.  His undergraduate work was interrupted while he
worked on the Manhatten project in Los Alamos.

Kemeny's student years were times of exciting developments in
mathematics, particularly in the areas of logic and computing.  John
took full advantage of his opportunity to learn from the greats; he
worked with fellow Hungarians John von Neumann and Leo Szilard at Los
Alamos, wrote his Ph.D. thesis with Alonzo Church, and was a research
assistant to Albert Einstein.  He was on his way to a traditional
distinguished scholarly career as a promising young assistant
professor at Princeton with a joint appointment in mathematics and
philosophy when he decided instead to accept the challenge of
developing a new mathematics department at a college which he had
barely heard of and which was certainly not known as a center of
excellence in mathematics.

Kemeny came to Dartmouth only 27 year old and was given great freedom
to develop a mathematics program.  He had already written his first
book A Philosopher Looks at Science that had been well received.  Even
at this early age Kemeny showed the special abilities that were to
become his trademark.  He was extremely bright and a remarkable
problem solver.  Given a complex problem, be it mathematical,
political, or social, John could come up with a simple, elegant and
practical solution.  One of the first to anticipate the central role
that computing would come to play in our world, Kemeny insisted that
some knowledge of computing was an integral part of a liberal
education.  To make the computer accessible to undergraduates, a
notion nearly unheard of at the time, he and his colleague Tom Kurtz
developed one of the world's first time-sharing systems.

John carried out this time-sharing project in true Kemeny style.
Knowing that the professionals would believe his goal impossible, he
shunned them and enlisted instead the help of bright undergraduates
who, like him, were naive enough to think it possible.

Just as von Neumann realized that a computer that did only ordinary
arithmetic operations could have extraordinary power, Kemeny realized
that to make this power available to everyone, a programming language
could and should be exceedingly simple.  This led him to develop with
Tom Kurtz the computer language BASIC which is still one of the most
widely used computer languages.

Kemeny also applied his own philosophy to curriculum development.  Not
content with mathematics being "the only subject you can study for 14
years and not learn a single thing that has been done since 1800", he
introduced a new freshman course, finite mathematics, which included
logic, probability, and matrix algebra, to complement the standard
calculus curriculum.  He also encouraged students interested in
pursuing mathematics not simply to study the subject, but actually to
do mathematical research while still undergraduates.

During all this activity Kemeny maintained an active research program
developing with me new theories for and applications of Markov chains.

In 1970 Dartmouth College faced major problems with increasing demands
to provide a more diverse student body.  The trustees chose Kemeny to
tackle these problems, electing him the 13th president of the college.
Once again his solutions to complex problems bore his unmistakable
stamp.  He initiated co-education and made it more palatable to the
alumni by an ingenious calendar reform that used the summer term to
admit women without decreasing the male enrollment.  At the same time
Kemeny revived a long forgotten Dartmouth commitment to educate Native
Americans by making a special effort to recruit Native American
students and, establishing a strong Native American program.

John Kemeny was a great teacher and teaching was his first love.  The
chairman of the Board of Trustees did not want him to impose the
condition that he continue to teach for his acceptance of the
presidency.  Kemeny remarked, " You would have given me two afternoons
off a week to play golf, if I had insisted.  My hobby happens to be
teaching; look at it that way."  He continued to teach throughout his
presidency rarely missing a class.

As chairman of the Three Mile Island investigation Kemeny was
horrified by the problems he found that led to this accident.
However, he was a born optimist and felt that for this problem, and,
in fact for all of society's major problems, we have the tools to find
a solution and need only need the will to do so.

While at Princeton working in the World Federalist movement, John was
tempted to devote a major part of his time to this program.  Einstein
told him that he should first make his mark in the world, for then
people would listen to him.  We have all been rewarded by Kemeny's
decision to heed Einstein's advice.
 
 
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