John Vincent Atanasoff was born in 1903 in New York State. His father was a Bulgarian immigrant named Ivan (John) Atanasov and his mother was Iva Lucena Purdy, a mathematics schoolteacher. The couple had nine children and resided in Brewster, Florida, during John Vincent's childhood. As a young child, Atanasoff was very interested in mathematical principles and studied calculus at the age of 9. He completed high school in two years and in 1921, he entered the University of Florida in Gainesville. He graduated from the University of Florida with a B.S. (1925) in electrical engineering and accepted a teaching position from Iowa State College.



Atanasoff received his master's degree (1926) in mathematics from Iowa State College, and a few days later, he married Lura Meeks. They had three children: Elsie, Joanne and John II. He completed his doctoral thesis, "The Dielectric Constant of Helium," at the University of Wisconsin and received his Ph.D. in theoretical physics in 1930. In the fall of 1930 he became a member of the Iowa State College faculty as assistant professor in mathematics and physics. Atanasoff began developing a computation method for solving complicated math problems in a faster, more efficient way. He was promoted to associate professor (1936) of both mathematics and physics.



Atanasoff continued to struggle with the development of a faster computation system and in 1937 developed basic concepts for his computing machine. After receiving a grant of $650 from Iowa State College in March 1939, Atanasoff hired an electrical engineering student, Clifford E. Berry, to assist him. From 1939 until 1941 they worked at developing and improving the ABC, Atanasoff-Berry Computer, as it was later named. When World War II started on 7 December 1941, the work on the computer came to a halt. Although Iowa State College had hired a Chicago patent lawyer, Richard R. Trexler, the patenting of the ABC was never completed.



In September of 1942 Atanasoff left for a defense-related position at the Naval Ordnance Laboratory in Washington, D.C. and became Chief of the Acoustics Division. By 1948 the Atanasoff-Berry Computer had been removed from the Physics Building and dismantled. Neither Atanasoff nor Clifford Berry were ever notified that the computer was going to be destroyed.



In 1949 Atanasoff and his wife Lura were divorced. Lura moved with the children to Denver, Colorado. In the same year, John Atanasoff married Alice Crosby.



In 1949 he became chief scientist for the Army Field Forces and he then returned to Washington as director (1950-1951) of the Navy Fuse Program at the Naval Ordnance Laboratory. In 1952 he established The Ordnance Engineering Corporation, a research and engineering company in Rockville, Maryland, with his friend and former student, David Beecher. The company was sold to Aerojet General Corporation in 1957, and he became Manager of its Atlantic Division from 1957-1959 and Vice President from 1959-1961. In 1961 he retired.



Although the ABC was never patented, it was part of major court case in the 1960s and 1970s. In Honeywell v. Sperry Rand, Sperry Rand was attempting to establish the validity of patent rights they had purchased from J. Presper Eckert and John W. Mauchly. These rights included the Electronic Numerical Integrator (ENIAC) which Eckert and Mauchly had patented in 1964. Honeywell, Inc. was trying to establish that Mauchly had obtained important concepts used in the ENIAC from examination of a device known as the Atanasoff-Berry Computer, during a visit to Iowa State in June, 1941. In his decision (1973), the judge agreed that the concepts used in developing ENIAC were based on Atanasoff's work with the ABC.



Atanasoff received numerous awards and honors including: the U.S. Navy Distinguished Service Award (1945); Order of Cyril and Methodius (1970);Iowa Inventors Hall of Fame (1974); Governor's Science Medal (1985);Holley Medal, American Society of Mechanical Engineers (1985) and the Coors American Ingenuity Award (1986) and the National Medal of Technology (1990).



After a long illness, Atanasoff died of a stroke on 15 June 1995 at his home in Maryland.