Name: Stephen Wolfram

Born: August 29, 1959, in London, England, UK

  • British scientist and the chief designer of the Mathematica software application and the Wolfram Alpha computational knowledge engine. Wolfram|Alpha is one of the answer engines behind Microsoft’s Bing and Apple’s Siri (along with Google and Yelp!) answering factual questions.
  • According to Google Scholar, Stephen Wolfram is cited by over 30,000 publications (up to April 2012), has an h-index of 58, and an Erdős number of 2.
  • As a boy, Stephen Wolfram was called a young Einstein.
  • At age 13, he earned a scholarship to Eton College.
  • At age 14, he wrote his first book on particle physics.
  • At age 17, he was published in the scientific journal Nuclear Physics.
  • At age 18, he wrote a widely-acclaimed paper on heavy quark production.
  • At age 20, he received his PhD in theoretical physics.

Significant publications

  • A New Kind of Science (2002).

Honors and awards

  • Received one of the first MacArthur awards at age 21 (1981).

Quotes

“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.”

Websites

  • Stephen Wolfram on Twitter
  • Stephen Wolfram personal website