Stephen Wolfram: Difference between revisions
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* [[Wolfram Language]] |
* [[Wolfram Language]] |
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| influences = [[Richard Crandall]],<ref>{{Cite journal | last1 = Wolfram | first1 = S. | doi = 10.1145/2503697.2503700 | title = Remembering Richard Crandall (1947--2012) | journal = ACM Communications in Computer Algebra | volume = 47 | pages = 14 | year = 2013 | pmid = | pmc = }}</ref> [[Richard Feynman]], [[George Zweig]]<ref>[http://www.wolframscience.com/nksonline/page-xiv?firstview=1 Stephen Wolfram, ''A New Kind of Science''], p. xiv.</ref> |
| influences = [[Richard Crandall]],<ref>{{Cite journal | last1 = Wolfram | first1 = S. | doi = 10.1145/2503697.2503700 | title = Remembering Richard Crandall (1947--2012) | journal = ACM Communications in Computer Algebra | volume = 47 | pages = 14 | year = 2013 | pmid = | pmc = }}</ref> [[Richard Feynman]], [[Alan Turing]], [[Steve Jobs]], [[George Zweig]]<ref>[http://www.wolframscience.com/nksonline/page-xiv?firstview=1 Stephen Wolfram, ''A New Kind of Science''], p. xiv.</ref> |
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| website = {{startplainlist|class=nowrap}} |
| website = {{startplainlist|class=nowrap}} |
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* {{URL|http://www.stephenwolfram.com}} |
* {{URL|http://www.stephenwolfram.com}} |
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==Education and early career== |
==Education and early career== |
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As a young child, Wolfram |
As a young child, Wolfram had difficulties learning arithmetic.<ref>[https://www.nytimes.com/1981/05/24/us/physicist-awarded-genius-prize-finds-reality-in-invisible-world.html 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."</ref> At the age of 12, he wrote a dictionary on physics.<ref>{{cite book|url=http://www.stephenwolfram.com/publications/books/unpublished/ConciseDirectoryOfPhysics.pdf|title=Concise Directory of Physics|year=1972|author=S. Wolfram}}</ref> By 13 or 14, he had written three books on particle physics.<ref>{{cite book|url=http://www.stephenwolfram.com/publications/books/unpublished/PhysicsOfSubatomicParticles.pdf|title=The Physics of Subatomic Particles|year=1973|author=S. Wolfram}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|url=http://www.stephenwolfram.com/publications/books/unpublished/IntroductionToTheWeakInteractionVolumeOne.pdf|title=Introduction to the Weak Interaction|volume=1|year=1974|author=S. Wolfram}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|url=http://www.stephenwolfram.com/publications/books/unpublished/IntroductionToTheWeakInteractionVolumeTwo.pdf|title=Introduction to the Weak Interaction|volume=2|year=1974|author=S. Wolfram}}</ref> They have not been published. |
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===Particle physics=== |
===Particle physics=== |
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=== ''Mathematica'' === |
=== ''Mathematica'' === |
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{{Main article|Mathematica}} |
{{Main article|Mathematica}} |
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In 1986 Wolfram left the [[Institute for Advanced Study]] for 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 1986 Wolfram left the [[Institute for Advanced Study]] for 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 on June 23, 1988, when he left academia. In 1987, he founded [[Wolfram Research]] which continues to develop and market the program.<ref name=bio /> |
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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.<ref name="jstor.org"/> |
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.<ref name="jstor.org"/> |
Revision as of 19:36, 23 February 2018
Stephen Wolfram | |
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Born | London, England, United Kingdom | 29 August 1959
Nationality | British, American |
Education | Dragon School[6] Eton College |
Alma mater |
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Known for |
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Awards | MacArthur Fellowship (1981) |
Scientific career | |
Fields | |
Institutions |
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Thesis | Some Topics in Theoretical High-Energy Physics (1980) |
Website |
Stephen Wolfram (born August 29, 1959) is a British-American[7] computer scientist, physicist, and businessman. He is known for his work in computer science, mathematics, and in theoretical physics.[8][9] He is the author of the book A New Kind of Science, published in 2002.[2] His book An Elementary Introduction to the Wolfram Language appeared in 2015 and Idea Makers: Personal Perspectives on the Lives & Ideas of Some Notable People appeared in 2016. In 2012 he was named an inaugural fellow of the American Mathematical Society.[10]
As a businessman, he is the founder and CEO of the software company
Early life
Stephen Wolfram was born in London in 1959 to Hugo and Sybil Wolfram.
Hugo Wolfram
Wolfram's father, Hugo Wolfram (1925–2015), a textile manufacturer born in Bochum, Germany, served as managing director of the Lurex Company, makers of the fabric Lurex and was the author of three novels.[11][12][13][14] He emigrated to England in 1933.[15] When World War II broke out, he 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.[11]
Sybil Wolfram
Wolfram's mother,
Personal life
Wolfram is married to a mathematician. They have four children together.[26][27]
Education and early career
As a young child, Wolfram had difficulties learning arithmetic.[28] At the age of 12, he wrote a dictionary on physics.[29] By 13 or 14, he had written three books on particle physics.[30][31][32] They have not been published.
Particle physics
Wolfram was a
He was educated at
A 1981 letter from Feynman to Gerald Freund giving reference for Wolfram for the MacArthur grant appears in Feynman's collected letters, Perfectly Reasonable Deviations from the Beaten Track. Following his PhD, Wolfram joined the faculty at Caltech and became the youngest recipient[42] of the MacArthur Fellowships in 1981, at age 21.[37]
Later career
Complex systems and cellular automata
In 1983, Wolfram left for the School of Natural Sciences of the
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."[50]
In the mid-1980s, Wolfram worked on simulations of physical processes (such as
Symbolic Manipulation Program
Wolfram led the development of the
Institute for Advanced Study
In 1983, Wolfram joined the Institute for Advanced Study, the Princeton, New Jersey-based former home of Albert Einstein. But by that time, he was no longer interested in particle physics. Instead, he began pursuing what he viewed as more creative areas-specifically, cellular automata. Wolfram methodically analyzed sets of rules, developing a classification system that rated the complexity of various cellular automata-all with the intention of clarifying the way we view complexity in the real world. In Wolfram's mind, studying the results of cellular-automata runs on the computer could unlock deep truths about the universe itself.[54]
Wolfram's cellular-automata work came to be cited in more than 10,000 papers.[54]
Mathematica
In 1986 Wolfram left the
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.[23]
Wolfram's younger brother, Conrad Wolfram, serves as CEO of Wolfram Research Europe, Ltd.[55][56]
A New Kind of Science
From 1992 to 2002, he worked on his controversial book A New Kind of Science,[5][57] 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 realization 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.[58]
Applications of A New Kind of Science
In 2003, Wolfram hosted the first Wolfram Summer School at
At the core of A New Kind of Science is the idea of exploring a new abstract universe: a computational universe of simple programs. In A New Kind of Science, Wolfram shows how remarkably simple programs in his computational universe captures the essence of the complexity - and beauty - of many systems in nature. This led to the creation of Wolfram Tones which works by taking simple programs from Wolfram's computational universe, applying music theory, and Wolfram Language algorithms to render them as music. Each program in effect defines a virtual world, with its own special story - and Wolfram Tones captures it as a musical composition.
In A New Kind of Science, Wolfram found what was then the simplest known universal Turing machine - with 2 states and 5 colors. However, he also did an extensive search of simpler Turing machines and in doing that, found a much simpler candidate for universality, a 2,3 Turing machine. On May 14, 2007, (the fifth anniversary of the publication of A New Kind of Science), Wolfram announced a $25,000 prize for the first person to determine whether or not the 2,3 Turing machine was actually universal or not, and could provide proof. Five months after the contest's announcement, an undergraduate student from Birmingham, UK, successfully found the 2,3 Turing machine to be universal and provided a 40-page paper to prove his findings.
Wolfram Alpha computational knowledge engine
In March 2009, Wolfram announced Wolfram|Alpha, an
Wolfram Alpha is one of the answer engines behind
Touch Press
In 2010, Wolfram co-founded Touch Press along with Theodore Gray, Max Whitby, and John Cromie. The company specialises in creating in-depth premium apps and games covering a wide range of educational subjects designed for children, parents, students, and educators. Since the launch, Touch Press has published more than 100 apps.
Wolfram Language
In March 2014, at the annual
On December 8, 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.[70] The release of the second edition of the book[71] coincided with a "CEO for hire" competition during the 2017 Collision tech conference.[72]
Both Stephen Wolfram and Christopher Wolfram were involved in helping create the alien language for the film Arrival, for which they used the Wolfram Language.[73][74][75]
Personal analytics
The significance data has on the products Wolfram creates transfers into his own life. He has an extensive log of personal analytics, including emails received and sent, keystrokes 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".[76]
Bibliography
- Idea Makers: Personal Perspectives on the Lives & Ideas of Some Notable People (2016)[77]
- Elementary Introduction to the Wolfram Language (2015)[78]
- 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
- ISBN 9781450320597.
- ^ a b Stephen Wolfram's publications indexed by the Scopus bibliographic database. (subscription required)
- .
- ^ Stephen Wolfram, A New Kind of Science, p. xiv.
- ^ PMID 12015565.
- ^ My Life in Technology—As Told at the Computer History Museum
- ^ "Biographical Facts for Stephen Wolfram". www.stephenwolfram.com. Retrieved 2 March 2017.
- ^ "Stephen Wolfram". Wolfram Alpha. Retrieved 15 May 2012.
{{cite journal}}
: Cite journal requires|journal=
(help) - ^ "Stephen Wolfram: 'I am an information pack rat'". New Scientist. Retrieved 19 April 2014.
{{cite journal}}
: Cite journal requires|journal=
(help) - ^ List of Fellows of the American Mathematical Society, retrieved 1 September 2013.
- ^ a b Telling a good yarn by Jenny Lunnon, Oxford Times, Thursday 21 September 2006.
- ^ PHYSICIST AWARDED 'GENIUS' PRIZE FINDS REALITY IN INVISIBLE WORLD, by GLADWIN HILL, Special to the New York Times, Published: May 24, 1981
- ^ Howard Gottlieb Archival Research Center: Wolfram, Hugo (1925- ): "The Hugo Wolfram collection consists of manuscripts by Wolfram for novels, short stories, and essays."
- ^ Kirkus review of Into a Neutral Country, 1969
- ^ Hugo Wolfram. 1925- , Jüdische Schriftstellerinnen und Schriftsteller in Westfalen.
- ^ Philosophical Logic: An Introduction by Sybil Wolfram, 2014 [1989].
- ^ In-laws and Outlaws: Kinship and Marriage in England by Sybil Wolfram, 1987.
- ^ a b c Levy, Steven. "The Man Who Cracked The Code to Everything ..." No. 10.06. Wired. Retrieved 3 March 2015.
- .
- ^ 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.
- ^ The Psycho-Analytical Approach to Juvenile Delinquency: Theory, Case Studies, Treatment by Kate Friedlander, 1998[1947].
- ^ Kate Friedländer née Frankl (1902-1949), Psychoanalytikerinnen. Biografisches Lexikon. Trans.: "The vegetative genesis of neurotic anxiety and drug elimination"
- ^ a b Smith, M. E.. (1993). Obituary. Anthropology Today, 9(6), 22–22. Retrieved from https://www.jstor.org/stable/2783224
- ^ FRIEDLANDER, KATE in Jewish Virtual Library.
- ^ Kate Friedländer née Frankl (1902-1949), Psychoanalytikerinnen. Biografisches Lexikon.
- ^ "Stephen Wolfram". Sunday Profile. 31 May 2009. Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
- ^ http://www.stephenwolfram.com/bio-facts/
- ^ 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."
- ^ S. Wolfram (1972). Concise Directory of Physics (PDF).
- ^ S. Wolfram (1973). The Physics of Subatomic Particles (PDF).
- ^ S. Wolfram (1974). Introduction to the Weak Interaction (PDF). Vol. 1.
- ^ S. Wolfram (1974). Introduction to the Weak Interaction (PDF). Vol. 2.
- ^ Stephen Wolfram: Articles on Particle Physics
- .
- ^ 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."
- ^ 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…”
- ^ a b Arndt, Michael (17 May 2002). "Stephen Wolfram's Simple Science". BusinessWeek. Retrieved 20 August 2015.
- ^ 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,"" ...
- ^ Stephen Wolfram at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
- ^ a b Wolfram, Stephen (1980). Some Topics in Theoretical High-Energy Physics (PhD thesis). California Institute of Technology.
- ^ Application
- ^ "About Stephen Wolfram". www.stephenwolfram.com. Retrieved 13 October 2015.
- .
- .
- .
- doi:10.1038/311419a0.
- .
- ISBN 0201120658
- ISSN 0891-2513. Retrieved 24 June 2015.
- ^ Perfectly Reasonable Deviations from the Beaten Track by Richard Feynman, 2006, p. 330.
- ^ W. Daniel Hillis (February 1989). "Richard Feynman and The Connection Machine". Physics Today. Archived from the original on 28 July 2009. Retrieved 3 November 2006.
{{cite web}}
: Unknown parameter|deadurl=
ignored (|url-status=
suggested) (help) - ^ a b "The Man Who Cracked The Code to Everything". Wired. Retrieved 7 April 2012.
- PMID 17816011.
- ^ a b "The Man Who Cracked The Code to Everything..." Wired.com. Retrieved 6 February 2018.
- ^ Bio, ConradWolfram.com.
- ^ "Stephen Wolfram". nndb.com. Retrieved 11 May 2009.
- ISBN 1579550088
- ^ TED (2010): Stephen Wolfram: Scientist, Inventor. Online (accessed 19 January 2010).
- ^ Wolfram, Stephen (5 March 2009). "Wolfram|Alpha Is Coming!". Wolfram blog. Retrieved 9 March 2009.
- ^ "Announcing Wolfram|Alpha Pro". Wolfram|Alpha blog. Retrieved 7 April 2012.
- ^ Johnson, Bobbie (9 March 2009). "British search engine 'could rival Google'". The Guardian. Retrieved 9 March 2009.
- ^ Wolfram|Alpha: Searching for Truth by Rudy Rucker, H+ Magazine, April 6, 2009.
- ^ "Answering your questions with Bing and Wolfram Alpha". "Microsoft's Bing blog". Retrieved 7 April 2012.
- ^ Stephen Wolfram Talks Bing Partnership, Software Strategy, and the Future of Knowledge Computing by Gregory T. Huang, Xconomy, January 5th, 2010.
- ^ "iPhone features". Apple. Retrieved 7 April 2012.
- ^ Wolfram Language reference page Retrieved on 14 May 2014.
- ^ Slate's article Stephen Wolfram's New Programming Language: He Can Make The World Computable, 6 March 2014. Retrieved on 14 May 2014.
- ^ What Tech Makes Possible in EDU Research, SXSW Panelpicker.
- ^ New in the Wolfram Language: Cryptography, May 15, 2015, by Christopher Wolfram, Connectivity Group
- ^ Stephen Wolfram - I Wrote a Book — To Teach the Wolfram Language
- ^ "Machine Learning for Middle Schoolers—Stephen Wolfram". blog.stephenwolfram.com. Retrieved 17 May 2017.
- ^ "Stephen Wolfram". Twitter. Retrieved 17 May 2017.
- ^ How Arrival's Designers Crafted a Mesmerizing Language, Margaret Rhodes, Wired, November 16, 2016.
- ^ "Dissecting the alien language in 'Arrival'". Engadget. Retrieved 16 November 2016.
- ^ "Quick, How Might the Alien Spacecraft Work?—Stephen Wolfram". blog.stephenwolfram.com. Retrieved 16 November 2016.
- ^ Stephen, Wolfram. "The Personal Analytics of My Life". Wired. Retrieved 18 October 2016.
- ^ ‘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.
- ^ Stephen Wolfram Aims to Democratize His Software by Steve Lohr, The New York Times, December 14, 2015.