When I saw this, I wondered whether this was the same Von Neumann who gave his name to Von Neumann probes, which are hypothetical self-replicating spacecraft that can fill the galaxy within a relatively short timespan.

It turns out that this is the same Van Neumann, who appeared to have been very influential in the early days of computing. In reading about him, I was impressed with all the work he'd done. The people who came up with the concept of Von Neumann probes named them after Von Neumann because of his theoretical work regarding how computing machines can self-replicate.

Fermi also used the concept of Von Neumann probes and the lack of alien Von Neumann spacecraft as proof that aliens (or at least interstellar spacefaring aliens) don't exist.