Name: Norbert W. Wiener

Born: November 26, 1894, in Columbia, Missouri, USA

Death: March 18, 1964 (Age: 69)

  • American mathematician and Professor of Mathematics at MIT.
  • A famous child prodigy, Wiener became an early researcher in stochastic and Noise Processes. His contributions were relevant to the fields of electronic engineering, electronic communication, and control systems.
  • Regarded as the originator of cybernetics, a formalization of the notion of feedback. It would have many implications for engineering, systems control, computer science, biology, philosophy, and the organization of society.

Significant publications

  • God & Golem, Inc.: A Comment on Certain Points Where Cybernetics Impinges on Religion (1964).
  • Nonlinear Problems in Random Theory (1958).
  • The Human Use of Human Beings (1950).
  • Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine (1948).
  • Generalized harmonic analysis (1930).

Honors and awards

  • Won the U.S. National Book Award in Science, Philosophy, and Religion for God & Golem, Inc (1965).
  • Won the Bôcher Memorial Prize (1933).

Quotes

“Information is information, not matter or energy.”