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'''Stephen Wolfram''' (born 29 August 1959) is a British scientist known for his work in [[computer science]], [[mathematics]], and in [[theoretical physics]].<ref>{{cite journal |title=Stephen Wolfram |url=http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=Stephen+Wolfram |publisher=Wolfram Alpha |accessdate=15 May 2012}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |publisher=New Scientist |title=Stephen Wolfram: 'I am an information pack rat' |url=http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20427381.100-stephen-wolfram-im-an-information-pack-rat.html |accessdate=19 April 2014}}</ref> He is the author of the book ''[[A New Kind of Science]].''<ref name="scopus">{{Scopus|id=16493873100}}</ref> In 2012 he became a fellow of the [[American Mathematical Society]].<ref>[http://www.ams.org/profession/fellows-list List of Fellows of the American Mathematical Society], retrieved 1 September 2013.</ref>
'''Stephen Wolfram''' (born 29 August 1959) is a British-American scientist known for his work in [[computer science]], [[mathematics]], and in [[theoretical physics]].<ref>{{cite journal |title=Stephen Wolfram |url=http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=Stephen+Wolfram |publisher=Wolfram Alpha |accessdate=15 May 2012}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |publisher=New Scientist |title=Stephen Wolfram: 'I am an information pack rat' |url=http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20427381.100-stephen-wolfram-im-an-information-pack-rat.html |accessdate=19 April 2014}}</ref> He is the author of the book ''[[A New Kind of Science]].''<ref name="scopus">{{Scopus|id=16493873100}}</ref> In 2012 he became a fellow of the [[American Mathematical Society]].<ref>[http://www.ams.org/profession/fellows-list List of Fellows of the American Mathematical Society], retrieved 1 September 2013.</ref>


He is the founder and CEO of the software company [[Wolfram Research]] where he worked as chief designer of [[Mathematica]] and the [[Wolfram Alpha]] [[answer engine]]. His recent work has been on [[knowledge-based programming]], expanding and refining the programming language of Mathematica into what is now called the [[Wolfram Language]]. His book ''An Elementary Introduction to the Wolfram Language'' appeared in 2015 and ''Idea Makers'' appeared in 2016.
He is the founder and CEO of the software company [[Wolfram Research]] where he worked as chief designer of [[Mathematica]] and the [[Wolfram Alpha]] [[answer engine]]. His recent work has been on [[knowledge-based programming]], expanding and refining the programming language of Mathematica into what is now called the [[Wolfram Language]]. His book ''An Elementary Introduction to the Wolfram Language'' appeared in 2015 and ''Idea Makers'' appeared in 2016.

Revision as of 20:54, 9 November 2016

Stephen Wolfram
Wolfram in 2008.
Born
Stephen Wolfram

(1959-08-29) 29 August 1959 (age 64)
London, England, United Kingdom
NationalityBritish, American
EducationDragon School[6]
Eton College
Alma mater
Known for
AwardsMacArthur Fellowship (1981)
Scientific career
Fields
Institutions
ThesisSome Topics in Theoretical High-Energy Physics (1980)
Website

Stephen Wolfram (born 29 August 1959) is a British-American scientist known for his work in computer science, mathematics, and in theoretical physics.[7][8] He is the author of the book A New Kind of Science.[2] In 2012 he became a fellow of the American Mathematical Society.[9]

He is the founder and CEO of the software company

knowledge-based programming, expanding and refining the programming language of Mathematica into what is now called the Wolfram Language
. His book An Elementary Introduction to the Wolfram Language appeared in 2015 and Idea Makers appeared in 2016.

Early life

Stephen Wolfram was born in London in 1959 to Hugo and Sybil Wolfram.

Hugo Wolfram

Stephen's father, Hugo Wolfram (born 1925 in Bochum, Germany), a textile manufacturer, served as managing director of the Lurex Company, makers of the fabric Lurex and was the author of three novels.[10][11][12][13] He emigrated to England in 1933.[14] When World War II broke out, young Hugo left school at 15 and subsequently found it hard to get a job since he was regarded as an "enemy alien." As an adult, he took correspondence courses in philosophy and psychology.[10]

Sybil Wolfram

Stephen's mother,

Lady Margaret Hall at University of Oxford from 1964 to 1993. She published two books, Philosophical Logic: An Introduction (1989)[15] and In-laws and Outlaws: Kinship and Marriage in England (1987).[16][17] She was the translator of Claude Lévi-Strauss's La pensée sauvage (The Savage Mind), but later disavowed the translation.[18][19] She was the daughter of criminologist and psychoanalyst Kate Friedlander (1902–1949), an expert on the subject of juvenile delinquency,[20] and the physician Walter Misch (1889–1943) who, together, wrote Die vegetative Genese der neurotischen Angst und ihre medikamentöse Beseitigung.[21] After the Reichstag fire in 1933, she emigrated from Berlin, Germany to England with her parents and Jewish psychoanalyst, Paula Heimann (1899–1982).[22][23][24]

Family

Stephen is married to a mathematician and they have four children.[25]

Education and early career

As a young child, Wolfram initially struggled in school and had difficulties learning arithmetic.[26] At the age of 12, he wrote a dictionary on physics.[27] By 13 or 14, he had written three books on particle physics.[28][29][30] They were not published.

Particle physics

Wolfram was a

peer-reviewed scientific journals including Nuclear Physics B, Australian Journal of Physics, Nuovo Cimento, and Physical Review D.[31] Working independently, Wolfram published a widely cited paper on heavy quark production at age 18[5] and nine other papers,[17] and continued research and to publish on particle physics into his early twenties. Wolfram's work with Geoffrey C. Fox on the theory of the strong interaction is still used in experimental particle physics.[32]

He was educated at

St. John's College, Oxford at age 17 but found lectures "awful",[17] and left in 1978[34] without graduating[35][36] to attend the California Institute of Technology, the following year, where he received a PhD[37] in particle physics on November 19, 1979 at age 20.[38] Wolfram's thesis committee was composed of Richard Feynman, Peter Goldreich, Frank J. Sciulli and Steven Frautschi, and chaired by Richard D. Field.[38][39]

A 1981 letter from Feynman to Gerald Freund giving reference for Wolfram for the MacArthur grant appears in Feynman's collective letters, Perfectly Reasonable Deviations from the Beaten Track. Following his PhD, Wolfram joined the faculty at Caltech and became the youngest recipient[40] of the MacArthur Fellowships in 1981, at age 21.[35]

Later career

Complex systems and cellular automata

In 1983, Wolfram left for the School of Natural Sciences of the

Turing complete
.

A 1985 letter, from Feynman to Wolfram, also appears in Feynman's letters. In it, in response to Wolfram writing to him that he was thinking about creating some kind of institute where he might study complex systems, Feynman tells Wolfram, "You do not understand ordinary people," and advises him "find a way to do your research with as little contact with non-technical people as possible."[46]

In the mid-1980s, Wolfram worked on simulations of physical processes (such as

University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign[48] and the journal Complex Systems in 1987.[48]

Symbolic Manipulation Program

Main article:
Symbolic Manipulation Program

Wolfram led the development of the

Symbolic Manipulation Program) in the Caltech physics department during 1979–1981. A dispute with the administration over the intellectual property rights regarding SMP—patents, copyright, and faculty involvement in commercial ventures—eventually caused him to resign from Caltech.[49]
SMP was further developed and marketed commercially by Inference Corp. of Los Angeles during 1983–1988.

Mathematica

Main article:
Mathematica

In 1986 Wolfram left the

University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign where he founded their Center for Complex Systems Research and started to develop the computer algebra system Mathematica, which was first released in 1988, when he left academia. In 1987 he founded a company called Wolfram Research which continues to develop and market the program.[5]

Near the end of Sybil Wolfram's life, as part of her research for In-laws and Outlaws, she used her son's program Mathematica to analyze her data.[22]

Wolfram's younger brother, Conrad Wolfram, serves as CEO of Wolfram Research Europe, Ltd.[50][51]

A New Kind of Science

Main article: A New Kind of Science

From 1992 to 2002, he worked on his controversial book A New Kind of Science,[5][52] which presents an empirical study of very simple computational systems. Additionally, it argues that for fundamental reasons these types of systems, rather than traditional mathematics, are needed to model and understand complexity in nature. Wolfram's conclusion is that the universe is digital in its nature, and runs on fundamental laws which can be described as simple programs. He predicts that a realisation of this within the scientific communities will have a major and revolutionary influence on physics, chemistry and biology and the majority of the scientific areas in general, which is the reason for the book's title.

Since the release of the book in 2002, Wolfram has split his time between developing Mathematica and encouraging people to get involved with the subject matter of A New Kind of Science by giving talks, holding conferences, and starting a summer school devoted to the topic.[53]

Wolfram Alpha computational knowledge engine

Main article:
Wolfram Alpha

In March 2009, Wolfram announced Wolfram|Alpha, an

application programming interface allows other applications to extend and enhance Alpha.[56] Wolfram believes that as Wolfram Alpha comes into common use, "It will raise the level of scientific things that the average person can do."[57]

Wolfram|Alpha is one of the answer engines behind

Siri answering factual questions.[60]

Wolfram Language

Main article: Wolfram Language

In June 2014, Wolfram officially announced the

Mathematica, it was not officially named until 2014.[62] Wolfram's son, Christopher Wolfram, appeared on the program of SXSW giving a live-coding demonstration using Wolfram Language[63] and has blogged about Wolfram Language for Wolfram Research.[64]

On 8 December 2015, Wolfram published the book "An Elementary Introduction to the Wolfram Language" to introduce people with no knowledge of programming to the Wolfram Language and the kind of computational thinking it allows.[65]

Personal Analytics

The significance data has on the products Stephen creates transfers into his own life. He has an extensive log of personal analytics - including emails received and sent, key strokes made, meetings and events attended, phone calls, even physical movement dating back to the 1980s. He has stated "[personal analytics] can give us a whole new dimension to experiencing our lives"[66]

Bibliography

Idea Makers: Personal Perspectives on the Lives & Ideas of Some Notable People (2016)[67]

Elementary Introduction to the Wolfram Language (2015)[68]

A New Kind of Science (2002)

The Mathematica Book (multiple editions)

Cellular Automata and Complexity: Collected Papers (1994)

Theory and Applications of Cellular Automata (1986)

References

  1. ISBN 9781450320597
    .
  2. ^ a b Stephen Wolfram's publications indexed by the Scopus bibliographic database. (subscription required)
  3. doi:10.1145/2503697.2503700
    .
  4. ^ Stephen Wolfram, A New Kind of Science, p. xiv.
  5. ^
    PMID 12015565
    .
  6. ^ My Life in Technology—As Told at the Computer History Museum
  7. ^ "Stephen Wolfram". Wolfram Alpha. Retrieved 15 May 2012. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  8. ^ "Stephen Wolfram: 'I am an information pack rat'". New Scientist. Retrieved 19 April 2014. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  9. ^ List of Fellows of the American Mathematical Society, retrieved 1 September 2013.
  10. ^ a b Telling a good yarn by Jenny Lunnon, Oxford Times, Thursday 21 September 2006.
  11. ^ PHYSICIST AWARDED 'GENIUS' PRIZE FINDS REALITY IN INVISIBLE WORLD, by GLADWIN HILL, Special to the New York Times, Published: May 24, 1981
  12. ^ Howard Gottlieb Archival Research Center: Wolfram, Hugo (1925- ): "The Hugo Wolfram collection consists of manuscripts by Wolfram for novels, short stories, and essays."
  13. ^ Kirkus review of Into a Neutral Country, 1969
  14. ^ Hugo Wolfram. 1925- , Jüdische Schriftstellerinnen und Schriftsteller in Westfalen.
  15. ^ Philosophical Logic: An Introduction by Sybil Wolfram, 2014 [1989].
  16. ^ In-laws and Outlaws: Kinship and Marriage in England by Sybil Wolfram, 1987.
  17. ^ a b c Levy, Steven. "The Man Who Cracked The Code to Everything ..." No. 10.06. Wired. Retrieved 3 March 2015.
  18. ^ Letter to the Editor, American Anthropologist, February, 1967.
  19. ^ Times Literary Supplement, October 29, 2008. "The century of Claude Lévi-Strauss: How the great anthropologist, now approaching his 100th birthday, has earned a place in the prestigious Pléiade library", by Patrick Wilcken.
  20. ^ The Psycho-Analytical Approach to Juvenile Delinquency: Theory, Case Studies, Treatment by Kate Friedlander, 1998[1947].
  21. ^ Kate Friedländer née Frankl (1902-1949), Psychoanalytikerinnen. Biografisches Lexikon. Trans.: "The vegetative genesis of neurotic anxiety and drug elimination"
  22. ^ a b Smith, M. E.. (1993). Obituary. Anthropology Today, 9(6), 22–22. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/2783224
  23. ^ FRIEDLANDER, KATE in Jewish Virtual Library.
  24. ^ Kate Friedländer née Frankl (1902-1949), Psychoanalytikerinnen. Biografisches Lexikon.
  25. ^ "Stephen Wolfram". Sunday Profile. 31 May 2009. Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
  26. ^ PHYSICIST AWARDED 'GENIUS' PRIZE FINDS REALITY IN INVISIBLE WORLD, by GLADWIN HILL, Special to the New York Times, Published: May 24, 1981: "When I first went to school, they thought I was behind, he says, because I didn't want to read the silly books they gave us. And I never was able to do arithmetic. It was when he got into higher mathematics, such as calculus, he says, that he realized there was an invisible world that he wanted to explore."
  27. ^ S. Wolfram (1972). Concise Directory of Physics (PDF).
  28. ^ S. Wolfram (1973). The Physics of Subatomic Particles (PDF).
  29. ^ S. Wolfram (1974). Introduction to the Weak Interaction (PDF). Vol. 1.
  30. ^ S. Wolfram (1974). Introduction to the Weak Interaction (PDF). Vol. 2.
  31. ^ Stephen Wolfram: Articles on Particle Physics
  32. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.41.1581
    .
  33. ^ A Speech for (High-School) Graduates by Stephen Wolfram a commencement speech for Stanford Online High School, StephenWolfram.com, June 9, 2014: "You know, as it happens, I myself never officially graduated from high school, and this is actually the first high school graduation I’ve ever been to."
  34. ^ Complexity: A Guided Tour by Melanie Mitchell, 2009, p. 151: “In the early 1980s, Stephen Wolfram, a physicist working at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, became fascinated by cellular automata and the patterns they make. Wolfram is one of those legendary child prodigies people like to tell stories about. Born in London in 1959, Wolfram published his first physics paper at 15. Two years later, in the summer after his first year at Oxford, . . . Wolfram wrote a paper in the field of “quantum chromodynamics” that attracted the attention of Nobel Prize winning physicist Murray Gell-Mann, who invited Wolfram to join his group at Caltech…”
  35. ^ a b Arndt, Michael (17 May 2002). "Stephen Wolfram's Simple Science". BusinessWeek. Retrieved 20 August 2015.
  36. ^ Stephen Wolfram: 'The textbook has never interested me': The British child genius who abandoned physics to devote himself to coding and the cosmos, by Zoë Corbyn, The Guardian, Saturday 28 June 2014: "He entered Oxford University at 17 without A-levels and left around a year later without graduating. He was bored and he had been invited to cross the pond by the prestigious California Institute of Technology (Caltech) to do a PhD. "I had written a bunch of papers and so was pretty well known by that time,"" ...
  37. ^ Stephen Wolfram at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
  38. ^ a b Wolfram, Stephen (1980). Some Topics in Theoretical High-Energy Physics (PhD thesis). California Institute of Technology.
  39. ^ Application
  40. ^ "About Stephen Wolfram". www.stephenwolfram.com. Retrieved 13 October 2015.
  41. doi:10.1007/BF01217347
    .
  42. doi:10.1007/BF01223745
    .
  43. doi:10.1007/BF01021083
    .
  44. doi:10.1038/311419a0
    .
  45. doi:10.1103/RevModPhys.55.601
    .
  46. ^ Perfectly Reasonable Deviations from the Beaten Track by Richard Feynman, 2006, p. 330.
  47. ^ W. Daniel Hillis (February 1989). "Richard Feynman and The Connection Machine". Physics Today. Retrieved 3 November 2006.
  48. ^ a b "The Man Who Cracked The Code to Everything". Wired. Retrieved 7 April 2012.
  49. PMID 17816011
    .
  50. ^ Bio, ConradWolfram.com.
  51. ^ "Stephen Wolfram". nndb.com. Retrieved 11 May 2009.
  52. ^ ISBN 1579550088
  53. ^ TED (2010): Stephen Wolfram: Scientist, inventor. Online (accessed 19 January 2010).
  54. ^ Wolfram, Stephen (5 March 2009). "Wolfram|Alpha Is Coming!". Wolfram blog. Retrieved 9 March 2009.
  55. ^ "Announcing Wolfram|Alpha Pro". Wolfram|Alpha blog. Retrieved 7 April 2012.
  56. ^ Johnson, Bobbie (9 March 2009). "British search engine 'could rival Google'". The Guardian. Retrieved 9 March 2009.
  57. ^ Wolfram|Alpha: Searching for Truth by Rudy Rucker, H+ Magazine, April 6, 2009.
  58. ^ "Answering your questions with Bing and Wolfram Alpha". "Microsoft's Bing blog". Retrieved 7 April 2012.
  59. ^ Stephen Wolfram Talks Bing Partnership, Software Strategy, and the Future of Knowledge Computing by Gregory T. Huang, Xconomy, January 5th, 2010.
  60. ^ "iPhone features". Apple. Retrieved 7 April 2012.
  61. ^ Wolfram Language reference page Retrieved on 14 May 2014.
  62. ^ Slate's article Stephen Wolfram's New Programming Language: He Can Make The World Computable, 6 March 2014. Retrieved on 14 May 2014.
  63. ^ What Tech Makes Possible in EDU Research, SXSW Panelpicker.
  64. ^ New in the Wolfram Language: Cryptography, May 15, 2015 by Christopher Wolfram, Connectivity Group
  65. ^ Stephen Wolfram - I Wrote a Book — To Teach the Wolfram Language
  66. ^ Stephen, Wolfram. "The Personal Analytics of My Life". Wired. Retrieved 18 October 2016.
  67. ^ ‘Idea Makers’ tackles scientific thinkers’ big ideas and personal lives / Human side of science emphasized in new book by Tom Siegfried, Science News, August 13, 2016.
  68. ^ Stephen Wolfram Aims to Democratize His Software by Steve Lohr, The New York Times, December 14, 2015.

External links

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