Peter G. Neumann, Who Warned of Computer Security Risks, Dies at 93

In November 1952, a Harvard sophomore, Peter G. Neumann, had a two-hour breakfast with Albert Einstein, in which they discussed the physicist’s philosophy that “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler.”

Einstein’s aphorism led to a lifelong romance with both the beauty and the perils of complexity for Dr. Neumann, who went on to become one of the nation’s leading computer security researchers.

Dr. Neumann died on Sunday at the Santa Clara Medical Center in Santa Clara, Calif. He was still working full time on a Pentagon-supported advanced computer security design, which is being adopted by companies such as Google and Microsoft. He was 93.

The cause of death was complications from a recent fall, his daughter, Helen Neumann, said.

Dr. Neumann (pronounced NOY-man), who has worked as a computer scientist and security researcher at SRI International in Menlo Park, Calif., since 1971, has long been a voice in the wilderness warning about a computer industry that has been prone to repeatedly make the same mistakes.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/17/obituaries/peter-g-neumann-dead.html