The.Mathematica.Book.-.5thEd

Stephen Wolfram is the creator of Mathematica, and a well-known scientist. He is widely regarded as the most impor-

tant innovator in technical computing today, as well as one of the world's most original research scientists.

Born in London in 1959, he was educated at Eton, Oxford and Caltech. He published his first scientific paper at the age

of fifteen, and had received his PhD in theoretical physics from Caltech by the age of twenty. Wolfram's early scientific

work was mainly in high-energy physics, quantum field theory and cosmology, and included several now-classic

results. Having started to use computers in 1973, Wolfram rapidly became a leader in the emerging field of scientific

computing, and in 1979 he began the construction of SMP—the first modern computer algebra system—which he

released commercially in 1981.

In recognition of his early work in physics and computing, Wolfram became in 1981 the youngest recipient of a

MacArthur Prize Fellowship. Late in 1981, Wolfram then set out on an ambitious new direction in science: to develop

tions between computation and nature, and inventing such concepts as computational irreducibility. Wolfram's work

led to a wide range of applications—and provided the main scientific foundations for the popular movements known as

complexity theory and artificial life. Wolfram himself used his ideas to develop a new randomness generation system

and a new approach to computational fluid dynamics—both of which are now in widespread use.

Following his scientific work on complex systems research, Wolfram in 1986 founded the first research center and first

ournal in the field. Then, after a highly successful career in academia—first at Caltech, then at the Institute for

Advanced Study in Princeton, and finally as Professor of Physics, Mathematics and Computer Science at the University

of Illinois—Wolfram launched Wolfram Research, Inc.

development and scientific research. Building on his work from the mid-1980s, and now with Mathematica as a tool,

Wolfram made a rapid succession of major new discoveries. By the mid-1990s his discoveries led him to develop a

fundamentally new conceptual framework, which he then spent the remainder of the 1990s applying not only to new

kinds of questions, but also to many existing foundational problems in physics, biology, computer science, mathematics

After more than ten years of highly concentrated work, Wolfram finally described his achievements in his 1200-page

book A New Kind of Science. Released on May 14, 2002, the book was widely acclaimed and immediately became a

bestseller. Its publication has been seen as initiating a paradigm shift of historic importance in science.

In addition to leading Wolfram Research to break new ground with innovative technology, Wolfram is now developing

a series of research and educational initiatives in the science he has created.