Stephen Wolfram
Stephen Wolfram
Stephen Wolframis a British scientist known for his work in computer science, mathematics, and in theoretical physics. He is the author of the book A New Kind of Science. In 2012 he became a fellow of the American Mathematical Society...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionScientist
Date of Birth29 August 1959
both deal english-scientist functions notion operate represent symbolic
The most important precedents deal with the whole idea of symbolic programming - the notion of setting up symbolic expressions that can represent anything one wants, and then having functions that operate on both their structure and content.
design earlier english-scientist good guess mistakes news versions
I guess the good news is that we didn't make any big mistakes in the design of earlier versions of Mathematica that we'd have to go back on now.
describe dominated english-scientist exact good natural sciences using
You kind of alluded to it in your introduction. I mean, for the last 300 or so years, the exact sciences have been dominated by what is really a good idea, which is the idea that one can describe the natural world using mathematical equations.
english-scientist few people run
There are a few very small incompatible changes - I really doubt most people will ever run into them.
ego proven has-beens
It has been proven that the universe is computationally equivalent to my ego.
nonsense i-can ifs
If I can't understand something, then it's probably nonsense.
science simple watches
...All the wonders of our universe can in effect be captured by simple rules, yet ... there can be no way to know all the consequences of these rules, except in effect just to watch and see how they unfold.
may want sound
I want to know the truth, however perverted that may sound.
science years mathematical-equations
The thing that got me started on the science that I've been building now for about 20 years or so was the question of okay, if mathematical equations can't make progress in understanding complex phenomena in the natural world, how might we make progress?
nature years computer
So the thing I realized rather gradually - I must say starting about 20 years ago now that we know about computers and things - there's a possibility of a more general basis for rules to describe nature.
notebook running firsts
Well, the first thing to say is that we've worked hard to maintain compatibility, so that any program written with an earlier version of Mathematica can run without change in 3.0, and any notebook can be converted.
math thinking ideas
The fact that the same symbolic programming primitives work for those as work for math kinds of things, I think, really validates the idea of symbolic programming being something pretty general.
important today innovators
Stephen Wolfram is the creator of Mathematica and is widely regarded as the most important innovator in scientific and technical computing today.
rocks humans
Rocks are computationally equivalent to humans.