I am a mathematician by profession, and have spent more than thirty years researching my family genealogy and my late father's wartime career/adventures. During his lifetime he was widely known as "The Man from Timbuctoo" as he had been a prisoner there during WW2. He also held a George Medal and a Lloyd's War Medal for Bravery at Sea. Three items he brought home from Timbuctoo are on loan to the Imperial War Museum in London and on display in the Survival at Sea Exhibition. They are: a New Testament with a diary of the movements the prisoners made whilst captured; a Red Cross label from a parcel addressed to Peter de Neumann in Timbuctoo; and the tumbler he made from the bottom of a Perrier Water bottle by half filling it with water, binding around it paraffin soaked twine at the water level and igniting it, making the glass crack at the water-line. The resulting vessel was then ground with stones to remove any sharp edges. Our (Neumann) family are middle European nobility who served in the retinues of Dukes, Grand Dukes, Kings, and Emperors. My ancestor Carl Friedrich Bernhard von Neumann came to London from Munich in 1833 and stayed.
I was educated at the Royal Hospital School, Holbrook, near Ipswich, and Birmingham University. I am the Royal Hospital School Archivist. During my career I worked for Marconi Research, GEC Research, NASA, ESA, NATO, RTZ, MOD (RN, Army and RAF), RARDE, RSRE, ASWE, AUWE, RAE, The City University, and as a visiting lecturer at several universities. I am a member of the Court of Essex University. I also served on the Council of the Institute of Mathematics and Its Applications.
Some of my mathematical work helped to make it possible to receive imagery from deep space missions, like from the Viking Landers 1 & 2 that transmitted the first colour pictures back from the surface of Mars. This same work also helped improve FM radio receivers and facilitated their miniaturization. I also invented and patented a self-configuring multi-processor computer, that included ideas used for the technology used in contactless smart cards, RF identification tagging chips, subcutaneous micro-electronic chips (eg pet identification) and industrial control and social monitoring, etc. Adaptions of it also has application in certain kinds of Information Warfare. In my published work (books and papers) I have used both the "de" and "von" forms of my name depending on the country in which they first appeared.
Many people mistakenly think that I was at Bletchley Park during the war - but I wasn't born until the end of 1943! However I did know quite a few of the mathematicians/engineerrs involved: Max Newman, Jack Good, Donald Michie, Tommy Flowers, "Doc" Coombs, Hugh Skillen, ....
I solved some of the "mysteries" often cited in books about the so-called "Bermuda Triangle". I also discovered that during WW1 Karl D枚nitz nearly lost his life when the U-boat (U-39), aboard which he was the First Watch Officer, was rammed and rolled over by ss RYTON on 5 August 1917. RYTON sank quickly as she was carrying iron ore, but D枚nitz's boat, badly damaged, limped back to base at Cattaro for repairs. How differently WW2 may have evolved had D枚nitz not been available to head the German Navy!
A portrait of me entitled "Professor Bernard de Neumann - The Mathematician" by John Wonnacott, CBE, won the 2005 Ondaatje Prize of the Royal Society of Portrait Painters. See for example:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/4486329.stm
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