John George Kemeny (born Kemény János György; May 31, 1926[1] – December 26, 1992) was a Hungarian-born American mathematician, computer scientist, and educator best known for co-developing[2] the BASIC programming language in 1964 with Thomas E. Kurtz.

in mathematics in 1946 after completing a senior thesis, titled "Equivalent logical systems", under the supervision of Alonzo Church.

[6] He then remained at Princeton to pursue graduate studies and received a Ph.D. in mathematics in 1949 after completing a doctoral dissertation, titled "Type-theory vs. set-theory", also under the supervision of Alonzo Church.

[1] J. Laurie Snell writes the following about Einstein's advice to Kemeny and seeing him drawn to the United World Federalists (UWF) Movement:[8] "John was tempted to devote a major part of his time to this program.

He teamed with Gerald L. Thompson and J. Laurie Snell to write Introduction to Finite Mathematics (1957) for students of biology and social sciences.

[9] This textbook, suitable for advanced seminars,[10] was followed by a second edition in 1976 when an additional chapter on random fields by David Griffeath was included.

In 1974, the American Federation of Information Processing Societies gave an award to Kemeny and Kurtz at the National Computer Conference for their work on BASIC and time-sharing.

During his administration, Dartmouth became more proactive in recruiting and retaining minority students[2] and revived its founding commitment to provide education for American Indians.