Cellular automata
Who
John von Neumann and Stanislaw Ulam, Hungarian-Jewish and Polish-Jewish mathematicians, at Los Alamos.
When
1940s
Where
Los Alamos, USA
Cellular automata are grids of simple cells whose patterns evolve by fixed rules, a foundational idea in computer science and complexity theory. They were developed in the 1940s by John von Neumann and Stanislaw Ulam. Both were Jewish émigré mathematicians who had fled antisemitism in Europe.
Part of “The Gifts of the Jews” — verified Jewish contributions to the world, with sources.