Stanislaw Ulam was a Polish-Jewish mathematician who survived the Holocaust and emigrated to the United States, where he worked at Los Alamos on the Manhattan Project. He is the co-inventor of the Monte Carlo method (with John von Neumann) and a foundational figure in nuclear physics and computer science. In 1948, Ulam proposed the idea of using a stored-program computer to simulate biological evolution — a concept that became the foundation of genetic algorithms and artificial life research. His wartime contribution to the hydrogen bomb included the critical "classical breeder" design that made thermonuclear weapons possible. Ulam was also a prolific chess player, a talented pianist, and a collector of African art. His autobiography, "Adventures of a Mathematician," is considered one of the great scientific memoirs of the 20th century.