Ex-prodigy: My Childhood and Youth
American mathematical logician Norbert Wiener was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts. An intellectually gifted child whose father taught at Harvard University, he graduated from Tufts University at the age of 14 and received his M.A. and his Ph.D. in mathematical logic from Harvard in The following year he studied at Cambridge University under Bertrand Russell (see also Vol. 4) and Godfrey Hardy and at Gottingen University, Europe's leading centers in mathematical and physical science. During World War I, Wiener taught at the University of Maine, worked as a writer and reporter, and served as a mathematician in Aberdeen, Maryland. In Wiener joined the faculty of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he remained for the rest of his long, notable career. While at MIT, he was influenced by the research on statistical mechanics of chemist Josiah Willard Gibbs. Adapting Gibbs's findings, he produced major research contributions on the problem of Brownian motion. He also used Tauberian theorems in his work on harmonic analysis and produced simple proofs of the prime-number theorem. Wiener also began to study electrical circuits, e
Entry updated 12 September Tagged: Author.
() US mathematician and author who established the contemporary sense of the word Cybernetics in his highly influential nonfiction work Cybernetics, or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine (; exp rev ). Some of his further speculations in this field appear in The Human Use of Human Beings () and in God & Golem, Inc.: A Comment on Certain Points Where Cybernetics Impinges on Religion (); the latter influenced Frank Herbert's Destination: Void (), which freely borrows Weiner's terminology.
As W Norbert he published two short sf stories, "The Miracle of the Broom Closet" (April Technical Engineering News; F&SF) and "The Brain" (April Technical Engineering News; in Crossroads in Time, anth , ed Groff Conklin). A novel, The Tempter (), deals with the disjunction between scientific research and industrial exploitation of a new Invention, but is not sf. Ex-Prodigy (), autobiographical nonfiction looking back to Wiener's early fame as a child prodigy, is an interesting insider study of a kind of intellectual Superman. [JC/DRL]
Norbert Wiener
born Columbia, Missouri: 26 November
I Am Mathematician
I read more than half of it, but I find no reason to continue right now: it is merely an account of things he studied, people he met, places he's been to, with not too many details. I think by now I already got the idea of the life of a (or at least this) mathematician in that time range: the start is somewhat difficult (even though he was a recognized prodigy during his childhood and teens), you need someone to give you credit, to work with, to appreciate what you're doing and this is exactly what he's found in Europe. On the other hand connections are very important, for personal development and not only. One has to be extremely versatile, open for movement and change. And at one point, there's time to return the favors others bestowed on you, and for him the context was that of WWII. And at this point I found interesting the deep humane character visible even in this subgroup of society, namely the mathematicians: indeed science should above any other differences, and there should be no division based on race or religion or who know
Norbert Wiener
Born November 26, , Columbus, Miss.; died March 18, , while on tour in Stockholm, Sweden; logician, scholar, and consultant who invented the concept of cybernetics.
Education: BA, mathematics, Tufts College, ; MA, Harvard University, ; PhD, Harvard University,
Professional Experience: docent, Harvard University, ; "Computer," Aberdeen Proving Ground, ; MIT: professor, , Institute Professor Emeritus,
"I became a scholar partly because it was my father's will but equally because it was my internal destiny." Thus did Norbert Wiener in his autobiography sum up the forces that directed him to become the mathematical genius whose work achieved international reputation. He is noted for his contributions in the communications sciences, in the realm of nonlinear problems in random theory, in the analysis of brain waves, and in the evolution of cybernetics, where he explored the similarities between the human brain and the modern computing machine capable of memory association, choice, and decision making.
Norbert Wiener was born in Columbus, Mississippi, on November 26, Signs of his genius appeared early. He began to read at age 4, and by 7 his reading r
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