[2] He has been described as one of The Martians,[3] an informal category which included one of his most famous students at ETH Zurich, John von Neumann.

[4] Although his parents were religious and he was baptized into the Catholic Church upon birth, George eventually grew up to be an agnostic.

On September 7, 1985, Pólya died in Palo Alto, California, United States[9] due to complications of a stroke he suffered during that summer.

Later in his career, he spent considerable effort to identify systematic methods of problem-solving to further discovery and invention in mathematics for students, teachers, and researchers.

The book includes advice for teaching students of mathematics and a mini-encyclopedia of heuristic terms.

Douglas Lenat's Automated Mathematician and Eurisko artificial intelligence programs were inspired by Pólya's work.

In addition to his works directly addressing problem solving, Pólya wrote another short book called Mathematical Methods in Science, based on a 1963 work supported by the National Science Foundation edited by Leon Bowden and published by the Mathematical Association of America (MAA) in 1977.