Mathematica - Summa Cum Laude Kirt's Cogitations™
#116
"Factoids," "Kirt's Cogitations," and
"Tech Topics Smorgasbord"
are all manifestations of my rantings on various subjects relevant (usually) to
the overall RF Cafe theme. All may be accessed on these pages:
Steven Wolfram, founder
of Wolfram Research (the Mathematica software company) is a genius - really. Born
in Britain, he dropped out of the Oxford University physics program at the ripe
old age of 15 because he was bored with the overly simple classes. He moved over
to Cal Tech and graduated with a Ph.D. at 20. Stephen was the youngest person ever
to receive the MacArthur genius award. After a short while, he dropped out of research
and wrote his infamous mathematics program which, according to some, "itself, could
earn a good mathematics degree at any major university." Wolfram, now 43 and very
wealthy, spends his time contemplating "A New Kind of Science," which is the title
of his new book. In it, he postulates that the inability of traditional science
to explain complex phenomena, like weather or the way water runs down the side of
a pitcher, means we should rethink our approach in a computational manner - like
a computer (don't worry, he did the thinking for us). Specifically, more like fractals.
Could he be the next Einstein or Newton? Time will tell, but most of his contemporaries
think he's spent too much time in isolation with his computers.
RF Cafe began life in 1996 as "RF Tools" in an AOL screen name web space totaling
2 MB. Its primary purpose was to provide me with ready access to commonly needed
formulas and reference material while performing my work as an RF system and circuit
design engineer. The World Wide Web (Internet) was largely an unknown entity at
the time and bandwidth was a scarce commodity. Dial-up modems blazed along at 14.4 kbps
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Mail" when a new message arrived...
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