In devising ways of communicating with the right hemisphere ,RW Sperry won the 1981 Nobel Prize for medicine , by showing the right hemisphere is " indeed a conscious system in its own right, perceiving, thinking, remembering & reasoning, " —Roger Wolcott Sperry CALTEC
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COMPUTING
BabbageBabbage, Charles (1791-1871), was an English mathematician known for his designs of two mechanical computing machines. These designs were based on some of the same principles that were later applied to electronic digital computers. However, Babbage could not build a working model of his machines. The technology of the time was not advanced enough, and Babbage lacked funding for the project. Babbage was born in Surrey, England. He helped found the Astronomical Society (now the Royal Astronomical Society). He was also the author of many books, including On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures (1832).
TuringTuring, Alan Mathison (1912-1954), an English mathematician, made important contributions to the development of electronic digital computers. In 1937, he described a hypothetical computing machine, now called the Turing machine, that could, in principle, perform any calculation. The device had a long tape divided into squares on which symbols could be written or read. The tape head of the machine could move to the left or to the right. The machine also had a table to tell it the order in which to carry out operations. The Turing machine became an important tool for determining what could be programmed on a computer. Turing was born in London. He studied mathematics at Cambridge University, England, and at Princeton University, U.S.A. During World War II (1939-1945), he helped crack German codes. After the war, he worked on a project to build the first British electronic digital computer. In 1950, he proposed a test for determining if machines might be said to "think." This test, now called the Turing test, is often mentioned in discussions of artificial intelligence
NapierNapier, John (1550-1617), Laird of Merchiston, was a Scottish mathematician. He developed methods of rapid calculation, which he sought to apply to astronomy, trigonometry, navigation, mapmaking, and surveying. Napier discovered how to multiply numbers by doing the easier task of adding other, corresponding numbers that he called logarithms . Logarithms are used to describe mathematically many natural phenomena. Napier also invented a set of "rods" or "bones" that could be arranged for arithmetical calculations. He was born near Edinburgh, Scotland.
MinskyElectrical engineer, mathematician, educator; born in New York City. A pioneer in the field of artificial intelligence, as early as 1951 he built a "learning machine" to try to demonstrate that what we call mind is composed of mindless parts. In 1958 he became an assistant professor of mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and in 1974, professor in the department of electrical engineering and computer science.
Russel lRussell, Bertrand (1872-1970), was a British philosopher and mathematician. Russell ranks among the greatest philosophers of the 1900's. He has also been called the most important logician (expert in logic) since the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle. Russell made his most important contributions in formal logic and the theory of knowledge. However, his influence extends far beyond these fields. Russell developed a prose style of extraordinary clarity, wit, and passion. He received the 1950 Nobel Prize for literature. Russell became an influential and controversial figure on social, political, and educational issues. He was an outspoken pacifist and advocated liberal attitudes toward sex, marriage, and methods of education. Russell was a critic of World War I (1914-1918). He was imprisoned in 1918 for statements considered harmful to British-American relations, and again in 1961 for "incitement to civil disobedience" in a campaign for nuclear disarmament. Russell made his major contributions to philosophy and mathematics in the early 1900's. He wanted to derive all of mathematics from logic, thus putting it on a sure foundation. Russell collaborated with the English mathematician and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead on the monumental three-volume Principia Mathematica (1910-1913). This work attempts to show that all pure mathematics follows from premises that are strictly logical and uses only those concepts that can be defined in purely logical terms. Although Russell's ideas have been refined and corrected by later mathematicians, all modern work in logic and the foundations of mathematics begins with his ideas. Russell made important contributions to the history of philosophy in such books as A Critical Exposition of the Philosophy of Leibniz (1900) and A History of Western Philosophy (1945). He expressed his social and political ideas in a number of works, including German Social Democracy (1896), Roads to Freedom (1918), Power (1938), and Authority and the Individual (1949). Russell also influenced morality and education in many essays and in such books as Why I Am Not a Christian (1927), Marriage and Morals (1929), and The Conquest of Happiness (1930). Russell wrote many accounts of his life, including a three-volume autobiography published from 1967 to 1969. Russell was born near Trellek, Wales, north of Chepstow. His full name was Bertrand Arthur William Russell. He was a member of an old and noble family. In 1931, on the death of his older brother, he inherited the family title and became Earl Russell.
Burners LeeBORN: 1955NATIVE CITY: London EDUCATION: B.A. in physics, Queen's College, Oxford, 1976 LITTLE KNOWN FACTS: He was knighted by the British Empire in 1998. Alternative names he considered, before settling on the World Wide Web, included "The Information Mine" and "Information Mesh." Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web, grew up talking about imaginary numbers with his parents over breakfast. The son of two British computer scientists who met while developing the Ferranti Mark II—one of the first commercially sold computers—young Berners-Lee played with computer programming tape and built toy computers out of cardboard boxes. Later, he repeated the feat—using a soldering iron and a discarded television set—to build a real computer while at Queen's College, Oxford, in the early 1970s. Talented in mathematics and electronics, Berners-Lee studied physics at Oxford, then worked for several high-tech computer companies in England. In 1980, he went to work for CERN, the European Particle Physics Laboratory, in Geneva, Switzerland, where he developed a computer system to help physicists share information stored on different computers. He named the program after a Victorian encyclopedia whose name had tickled his fancy—Enquire Within Upon Everything. After helping to found Image Computer Systems in England, he returned to CERN in 1984, and proposed a global hypertext project, based on Enquire, which would link physicists around the world using the Internet. By late 1989, he had developed a Web server and a basic browser, which he posted on the Web in 1991. The Web, which provided a way to easily publish text and pictures on the Internet, quickly caught on, especially when University of Illinois college student Marc Andreesen spearheaded a programming team to create a browser called Mosaic that was simple for computer novices to use. Use of the Internet grew to 40 million users in 1996. Unlike other technological innovators, Berners-Lee did not try to capitalize on his invention of the Web. He pointed out that any attempt to make the Web proprietary would undermine its purpose. Rejecting numerous commercial job offers, the slender blond man who prefers windsurfing to Net surfing instead became director of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) at the Massachusetts Institute for Technology in 1994. At W3C he works to expand the Web's technological capabilities and set standards for protocol design which will keep the Web open and easy to use, and prevent a single company from dominating the Web with its own standards. In October 1999, Berners-Lee published the book Weaving the Web: The Original Design and Ultimate Destiny of the World Wide Web by Its Inventor, which told the personal story of how he created the World Wide Web and discussed the future of the mass medium.
JobsBORN: February 24, 1955 NATIVE CITY: Los Altos, California EDUCATION: Dropped out of Reed College in Portland, Oregon, after one semester. LITTLE KNOWN FACT: At age 27, Jobs, who was adopted, discovered he had a sister best-selling novelist Mona Simpson. He's been called a brilliant visionary, an insufferable egotist, a passionate renegade, and an arrogant jerk. But prophet or prima donna, Steven Paul Jobs changed the way people think about technology and helped ignite the personal computer revolution. Adopted as an infant by a Northern California machinist, Jobs attended Homestead High School in Cupertino, California, where he befriended Steve Wozniak. After a brief stint at Reed College in Oregon, Jobs dropped out and trekked around India seeking spiritual enlightenment. He returned to find Wozniak working at Hewlett-Packard and building computers to impress pals in the Homebrew Computer Club. Convinced Wozniak's latest invention, the Apple I computer, would attract a wider audience than computer hobbyists, Jobs persuaded his friend to launch a business. Together the two started Apple Computers in Jobs' garage in 1976. By building the first personal computer that appealed to businesses and the public, Apple quickly became a $335 million company that dominated the fledgling market. But by 1981, IBM had joined the race with the IBM PC and Apple began losing ground. Meanwhile, Jobs was leading a development team that would change the face of personal computing forever. In December 1979, Jobs and his team visited the elite Xerox PARC research center, where they saw the Alto computer, a prototype which featured a graphical user interface and a mouse. Jobs' team rushed back to the office and modified specifications for the Lisa (a computer which bore the same name as Jobs' daughter). Both the Lisa, and its successor, the Macintosh, launched with a mouse and a point-and-click interface. Xerox unsuccessfully sued Apple for hijacking the graphic interface. Ironically, Apple also later sued Microsoft for using a graphic interface on its Windows operating system. Like Xerox, Apple lost the case. Although the graphic user interface radically changed the way people thought of computers, the Macintosh fell short of its early sales predictions, and Jobs was ousted from the Macintosh team before the product became successful. In 1985, Jobs left the company. He founded NeXT Software and purchased Pixar Animation Studios from filmmaker George Lucas in 1986. Under Jobs, Pixar produced 1995’s Toy Story (the first wholly computer generated film), 1998’s A Bug's Life, and 1999’s Toy Story 2. The studio is currently in production on its fourth animated feature, Monsters Inc., which is targeted for release in 2001. In a strange twist, Jobs was invited back to Apple in 1996 when Apple bought NeXT for $400 million. Jobs became interim CEO, and helped turn around the company's dwindling market share with the introduction of the tremendously popular iMac and iBook computer lines in the summer of 1998. In January 2000, Jobs was appointed permanent CEO of Apple Computers Inc. That same month, Apple also announced a $200 million investment in EarthLink, an Internet service provider that will work with Apple to bring new online features to computer users, including customized email service. Under Jobs’ direction, Apple has recently released the stylish Power Mac G4 Cube, a user-friendly supercomputer miraculously engineered into an eight-inch cube.
Gates
VannevarBush, Vannevar (1890-1974), was a famous United States electrical engineer and scientific research administrator. During World War II (1939-1945), he was director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD). Research sponsored by this agency led to such developments as the atomic bomb and improved radar systems, as well as drugs to fight malaria. Bush later played an important role in the establishment of the U.S. National Science Foundation. This organization, set up by the U.S. government in 1950, is one of the chief supporters of scientific research in the United States today. Bush patented a number of inventions, including the differential analyser and several other mechanical calculators. The differential analyser, which solved complicated mathematical equations, was the first reliable analog computer (see ANALOG COMPUTER). Vannevar Bush was born in Everett, Massachusetts, U.S.A.
Ada ByronAda Byron, Countess of Lovelace, was a British mathematician who lived between 1815-1852. She was a major influence in computer programming. Computer programming is essential for building space shuttles and satellites and in analyzing scientific data. Byron published "Sketch of the Analytical Engine" which discussed Charles Babbage's analytical engine (later to be known as the first computer). Her work was based on the writings of the Italian mathematician Luigi Menabrea, and meetings with Babbage himself. Byron designed the "punch-card" program which was a program that gave instructions to a computer. She also created the computer law known as GIGO (Garbage In, Garbage Out). This law basically states that a computer can use only what is put into it. In other words, a computer cannot have a mind of its own. Because of Byron's pioneering efforts in the computer era, the U.S. Department of Defense named a computer programming language (ADA) after her in 1977. |