Ex-Prodigy: My Childhood and Youth

Description

These two volumes (both are available in the M.I.T. Paperback series) comprise Norbert Wiener’s autobiography. Sometimes with humor and sometimes with sadness, they render an account, without sentiment, of the life of the world-renowned mathematician and scientist. An unusual life story, Norbert Wiecner’s penetrating observations accompany the fascinating details describing the maturation of a major world scientist. Norbert Wiener was a mathematician with extraordinarily broad interests. He was the son of a Harvard professor of Slavic languages who early recognized his son’s genius and supervised his educational program from the first. The boy was reading Dante and Darwin at the age of seven, graduated from Tufts College at 14, and took his doctor’s degree in philosophy from Harvard at 18. He studied philosophy under Royce and Santayana at Harvard, and mathematics under Bertrand Russell and G. H. Hardy at Cambridge. In 1919 he joined the Department of Mathematics at M.I.T., where he served until his death in mid-March, 1964, at the age of 69. The new and fast-growing field of the communication sciences owes as much to Wiener as to any one man. He coined the word for it - cybernetics - and was himself a pioneer in information theory, and one of the earliest to see the power of the digital computer and to develop the theory of feedback systems. In recent years he had turned to the study of biological and neurological problems, and was especially interested in brain waves and genetics. In 1963, he was awarded The National Medal of Science for his contributions in the fields of mathematics, engineering, and biological science. His last book _God and Golem, Inc._, as well as _Cybernetics_ are both available in hardcover editions, published by The M.I.T. Press. - Foreword - Introduction - I. A Russian Irishman in Kansas City - II. The Proper Missourians - III. First Remembered Patterns: 1894-1901 - IV. Cambridge to Cambridge, via New York and Vienna: June—September, 1901 - V. In the Sweat of My Brow: Cambridge, September, 1901—September, 1903 - VI. Diversions of a _Wunderkind_ - VII. A Child among Adolescents: Ayer High School, 1903-1906 - VIII. College Man in Short Trousers: September, 1906—June, 1909 102 - IX. Neither Child nor Youth - X. The Square Peg: Harvard, 1909-1910 - XI. Disinherited: Cornell, 1910-1911 - XII. Problems and Confusions: Summer, 1911 - XIII. A Philosopher Despite Himself: Harvard, 1911-1913 - XIV. Emancipation: Cambridge, June, 1913-April, 1914 - XV. A Traveling Scholar in Wartime: 1914-1915 - XVI. Trial Run: Teaching at Harvard and the University of Maine: 1915—1917 - XVII. Monkey Wrench, Paste Pot, and the Slide Rule War: 1917-1919 - XVIII. The Return to Mathematics - Epilogue - Index