21 Facts About Stephen Wolfram

Stephen Wolfram is a British-American computer scientist, physicist, and businessman.

Stephen Wolfram is known for his work in computer algebra and theoretical physics.

Stephen Wolfram was born in London in 1959 to Hugo and Sybil Wolfram, both German Jewish refugees to the United Kingdom.

Stephen Wolfram's mother, Sybil Stephen Wolfram, was a Fellow and Tutor in Philosophy at Lady Margaret Hall at University of Oxford from 1964 to 1993.

Stephen Wolfram was educated at Eton College, but left prematurely in 1976.

Stephen Wolfram entered St John's College, Oxford, at age 17 and left in 1978 without graduating to attend the California Institute of Technology the following year, where he received a PhD in particle physics in 1980.

In 1983, Stephen Wolfram left for the School of Natural Sciences of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.

Stephen Wolfram produced a series of papers investigating the class of elementary cellular automata, conceiving the Wolfram code, a naming system for one-dimensional cellular automata, and a classification scheme for the complexity of their behaviour.

Stephen Wolfram conjectured that the Rule 110 cellular automaton might be Turing complete, which a research assistant to Wolfram, Matthew Cook, later proved correct.

Stephen Wolfram sued Cook and temporarily blocked publication of the work on Rule 110 for allegedly violating a non-disclosure agreement until Stephen Wolfram could publish the work in his controversial book A New Kind of Science.

From 1992 to 2002, Stephen Wolfram worked on his controversial book A New Kind of Science, which presents an empirical study of simple computational systems.

Stephen Wolfram's conclusion is that the universe is discrete in its nature, and runs on fundamental laws that can be described as simple programs.

Stephen Wolfram predicts that a realization of this within scientific communities will have a revolutionary influence on physics, chemistry, biology, and most other scientific areas, hence the book's title.

The book was met with skepticism and criticism that Stephen Wolfram took credit for the work of others and made conclusions without evidence to support them.

In March 2009, Stephen Wolfram announced Stephen Wolfram Alpha, an answer engine.

Stephen Wolfram Alpha launched in May 2009, and a paid-for version with extra features launched in February 2012 that was met with criticism for its high price, which later dropped from $50 to $2.

In 2010, Stephen Wolfram co-founded Touchpress with Theodore Gray, Max Whitby, and John Cromie.

Stephen Wolfram specialised in creating in-depth premium apps and games covering a wide range of educational subjects designed for children, parents, students, and educators.

In March 2014, at the annual South by Southwest event, Stephen Wolfram officially announced the Stephen Wolfram Language as a new general multi-paradigm programming language, though it was previously available through Mathematica and not an entirely new programming language.

Stephen Wolfram has a log of personal analytics, including emails received and sent, keystrokes made, meetings and events attended, recordings of phone calls, and even physical movement dating back to the 1980s.

Stephen Wolfram was a scientific consultant for the 2016 film Arrival.