Stephen Wolfram

Stephen Wolfram
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Born	August 29 1959 (1959-08-29) (age 49) London, England, UK
Residence	Cambridge, Massachusetts
Nationality	British
Fields	Mathematician
Institutions	Wolfram Research
Alma mater	Oxford University, Caltech
Known for	Creator of Mathematica Author of A New Kind of Science
Notable awards	MacArthur Fellowship

Stephen Wolfram (born August 29, 1959 in London) is a physicist, mathematician and businessman known for his work in theoretical particle physics, cellular automata, complexity theory, and computer algebra, and is the creator of the computer program Mathematica.

[edit] Early life

Stephen Wolfram's parents were Jewish refugees who immigrated to England in 1933. ^{[1] [2]} Wolfram's father, Hugo Wolfram, was a novelist, and his mother, Sybil Wolfram, was a professor of philosophy at the University of Oxford. Wolfram was educated at Eton public school. Often described as a child prodigy, he published an article on particle physics at age 16^[3] and entered Oxford University (St John's College) at age 17. He wrote a widely cited paper on heavy quark production at age 17. ^[2] He received his Ph.D. in particle physics from Caltech at age 20^[4] and joined the faculty there. He became highly interested in cellular automata at age 21. ^[2] His work with Geoffrey Fox on the theory of the strong interaction is still used today in experimental particle physics.^[5]

[edit] Professional life

He led the development of the computer algebra system SMP (Symbolic Manipulation Program: SMP was essentially Version Zero of Mathematica) in the Caltech physics department during 1979–1981, but a dispute with the administration over the intellectual property rights regarding SMP -- patents/copyrights and faculty involvement in commercial ventures -– eventually caused him to resign from Caltech.^[6] SMP was further developed and marketed commercially by Inference Corp. of Los Angeles during the period 1983–1988. In 1981, Wolfram was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship. In 1983, he left for the School of Natural Sciences of the Institute for Advanced Study, where he studied cellular automata, mainly with computer simulations. In the middle 1980s Wolfram worked on simulations of physical processes (such as turbulent fluid flow) with cellular automata on the Connection Machine alongside Richard Feynman.^[7]

[edit] Mathematica

Main article: Mathematica

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 1988, when he left academia. In 1987 he co-founded a company called Wolfram Research which continues to develop and market the program.^[2]. Stephen Wolfram is currently the majority shareholder.

[edit] A New Kind of Science

Main article: A New Kind of Science

From 1992 to 2002, Wolfram worked on his controversial book A New Kind of Science (NKS), which presents an empirical study of very simple computational systems. Additionally, it argued that for fundamental reasons these types of systems, rather than traditional mathematics, are needed to model and understand complexity in nature.

Since the release of the NKS book in 2002, Wolfram has split his time between developing Mathematica and encouraging people to get involved with NKS by giving talks, holding NKS conferences, and starting an NKS summer school.

[edit] Discovery of the simplest universal Turing machine

In the NKS book, Wolfram claimed to have found the simplest known Universal Turing machine, the one with 2 states and 5 colors. Because it was known that no machine with 2 states and 2 colors can be universal, Wolfram afterwards made an empirical investigation of 2,985,984 possible 2,3 Turing machines and from among these candidates he selected one that he had an intuition might indeed be the simplest universal Turing machine. A US$25,000 prize^[8] was announced to be awarded to the first person or group who would provide a formal proof that that particular candidate is universal or that it is not. Alex Smith, a 20-year-old undergraduate from Birmingham, UK, claimed to have proven the universality of Wolfram's 2,3 Turing machine and was awarded the prize.^[9] Computer scientist Vaughan Pratt later claimed to have found an error in the reasoning of the proof.^[10] Wolfram Research and Alex Smith disputed Pratt's claim on the same discussion group.^[11][12][13]

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