Norbert Wiener

Norbert Wiener
Born	(1894-11-26)November 26, 1894 Columbia, Missouri, U.S.
Died	March 18, 1964(1964-03-18) (aged 69) Stockholm, Sweden
Education	Tufts College (BA) Cornell University (MA) Harvard University (PhD)
Known for	Cybernetics Brownian motion abstract Wiener space Wiener amalgam space classical Wiener space Evolutionary informatics Generalized Wiener process Information revolution Philosophy of information More: List of things named after Norbert Wiener
Spouse	Margaret Engemann ​ (m. 1926)​
Children	2
Awards	Bôcher Memorial Prize (1933) National Medal of Science (1963)
Scientific career
Fields	Mathematics Cybernetics Computer Science
Institutions	Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Thesis	A Comparison Between the Treatment of the Algebra of Relatives by Schroeder and that by Whitehead and Russell (1913)
Doctoral advisors	Karl Schmidt[1]
Other academic advisors	Josiah Royce[2]
Doctoral students	Amar Bose Colin Cherry Shikao Ikehara Yuk-Wing Lee Norman Levinson Dorothy Walcott Weeks George Zames John P. Costas
Signature

Norbert Wiener (November 26, 1894 – March 18, 1964) was an American computer scientist, mathematician and philosopher. He became a professor of mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). A child prodigy, Wiener later became an early researcher in stochastic and mathematical noise processes, contributing work relevant to electronic engineering, electronic communication, and control systems.

Wiener is considered the originator^[3] of cybernetics, the science of communication as it relates to living things and machines,^[4]

After much consideration, we have come to the conclusion that all the existing terminology has too heavy a bias to one side or another to serve the future development of the field as well as it should; and as happens so often to scientists, we have been forced to coin at least one artificial neo-Greek expression to fill the gap. We have decided to call the entire field of control and communication theory, whether in the machine or in the animal, by the name Cybernetics, which we form from the Greek κυβερνήτης or steersman.

with implications for engineering, systems control, computer science, biology, neuroscience, philosophy, and the organization of society. His work heavily influenced computer pioneer John von Neumann, information theorist Claude Shannon, anthropologists Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson, and others.

Wiener is credited as being one of the first to theorize that all intelligent behavior was the result of feedback mechanisms, that could possibly be simulated by machines and was an important early step towards the development of modern artificial intelligence.^[5]